
Arab sheikhs who had ridden in, camel-back, from the desert 
to pay their respects 



The 
Happy Hunting-Grounds 



By 
Kermit Roosevelt 

Author of "War in the Garden of Eden" 



Illustrated from Photographs by the Author 



New York 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1920 



^i^ 



Copyright, 1912 1920, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published October, 1920 



Copyright, 1916, by DODD, MEAD & CO. 

Copyright, i912, by THE AMATEUR SPORTSMAN SOCIETY 

Copyright, 1912, by P. F. COLLIER & SON, Inc. 

Copyright, 1920, by the metropolitan publications. Inc. 

Copyright, 1920, by THE RIDGWAY COMPANY 




©CI,A601032 



TO 

THE MISTRESS OF SAGAMORE 



Contents 



PAGE 



I. The Happy Hunting-Grounds .... 3 

II. In Quest of Sable Antelope .... 53 

III. The Sheep of the Desert 71 

rV. After Moose in New Brunswick . . 103 

V. Two BoOK-HuNTERS IN SoUTH AMERICA . 123 

VI. Seth Bullock— Sheriff of the Black 

Hills Country 151 



Illustrations 

Arab sheikhs who had ridden in, camel-back, from the 

desert to pay their respects Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



Sir Alfred Pease's sketch of our first giraffe hmit . . 24 

Father and R. H. Munro Ferguson at the Elkhorn Ranch, 

after the return from a successful hunting trip . . 34 

Facsimile of a picture letter by father 38 

Putting the tape on a tusker 42 

Launching a newly made dugout on the Diivida , . 44 

A relic of the Portuguese occupation; an old well beside 

the trail 56 

The Death Dance of the Wa Nyika children in memory 

of the chieftain's little son 58 

Across the bay from Mombasa; the porters ready to 

shoulder loads and march 66 

A desert camp in old Mexico 78 

Casares on his white mule 88 

Making fast the sheep's head ' . . 96 

A noonday halt on the way down river, returning from 

the hunting country 106 

Bringing out the trophies of the hunt 118 

The Captain makes advances to a little Indian girl . 152 

A morning's bag of prairie chicken in South Dakota . 170 



I 

The Happy 
Hun ting-Grounds 



I 

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

There is a universal saying to the effect 
that it is when men are off in the wilds that 
they show themselves as they really are. As 
is the case with the majority of proverbs there 
is much truth in it, for without the minor com- 
forts of life to smooth things down, and with 
even the elemental necessities more or less 
problematical, the inner man has an unusual 
opportunity of showing himself — and he is not 
always attractive. A man may be a pleasant 
companion when you always meet him clad in 
dry clothes, and certain of substantial meals at 
regulated intervals, but the same cheery indi- 
vidual may seem a very different person when 
you are both on half rations, eaten cold, and 
have been drenched for three days — sleeping 
from utter exhaustion, cramped and wet. 

My father had done much hunting with 
many and varied friends. I have often heard 
him say of some one whom I had thought an 
ideal hunting companion: ''He's a good fel- 



4 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

low, but he was always fishing about in the 
pot for the best piece of meat, and if there was 
but one partridge shot, he would try to roast 
it for himself. If there was any delicacy he 
wanted more than his share." Things assume 
such different proportions in the wilds; after 
two months living on palm-tree tops and 
monkeys, a ten-cent can of condensed milk 
bought for three dollars from a rubber explorer 
far exceeds in value the greatest delicacy of 
the season to the ordinary citizen who has a 
varied and sufficient menu at his command 
every day in the year. 

Even as small children father held us re- 
sponsible to the law of the jungle. He would 
take us out on camping trips to a neck of land 
four or five miles across the bay from home. 
We would row there in the afternoon, the boats 
laden with blankets and food. Then we 
would make a driftwood fire on which to fry 
our supper — usually bacon and chicken. I 
do not know whether it was the, to us, wild 
romance of our position, or the keen appetite 
from the row, but never since then have I 
eaten such bacon. Not even the smallest 
child was allowed to show a disposition to 
grab, or select his pieces of chicken — we were 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 5 

taught that that was an unpardonable offense 
out camping, and might cause the culprit to 
be left behind next time. And woe to any one 
who in clumsily walking about kicked sand 
into the frying-pan. After supper we would 
heap more driftwood on the fire, and drape 
ourselves in our blankets. Then we would 
stretch ourselves out in the sand while father 
would tell us ghost stories. The smallest of 
us lay within reach of father where we could 
touch him if the story became too vivid for 
our nerves and we needed the reassuring feel 
of his clothes to bring us back to reality. 
There was, however, a delicious danger in be- 
ing too near him. In stories in which the 
"haunt" seized his victim, father generally 
illustrated the action by making a grab at 
the nearest child. After the stories were fin- 
ished we rolled up in our blankets and, thor- 
oughly permeated with sand, we slept until the 
first faint light of dawn. Then there was the 
fire to be built up, and the breakfast cooked, 
and the long row home. As we rowed we 
chanted a ballad, usually of a seafaring na- 
ture; it might be "The Rhyme of the Three 
Sealers," or "The Galley Slave," or "Simon 
Danz." Father taught us these and many 



6 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

more, viva voce, when he was dressing for 
dinner. A child was not taken along on these 
"campings out" until he was six or seven. 
They took place three or four times a summer, 
and continued until after the African ex- 
pedition. By that time we were most of us 
away at work, scattered far and wide. 

Father always threw himself into our plays 
and romps when we were small as if he were 
no older than ourselves, and with all that he 
had seen and done and gone through, there was 
never any one with so fresh and enthusiastic 
an attitude. His wonderful versatility and 
his enormous power of concentration and ab- 
sorption were unequalled. He could turn from 
the consideration of the most grave problems 
of state to romp with us children as if there 
were not a worry in the world. Equally could 
he bury himself in an exhaustive treatise on 
the History of the Mongols or in the Hound 
of the Baskervilles. 

Until father sold his ranches in North Dakota 
he used to go out West each year for a month 
or so. Unfortunately, we were none of us 
old enough to be taken along, but we would 
wait eagerly for his letters, and the recipient of 
what we called a picture letter gloried in the 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 7 

envy of the rest until another mail placed a 
substitute upon the pedestal. In these picture 
letters father would sketch scenes and incidents 
about the ranch or on his short hunting trips. 
We read most of them to pieces, unluckily, 
but the other day I came across one of the 
non-picture letters that father wrote me: 

August 30, '96. 
Out on the prairie. 

I must send my little son a letter too, for his father 
loves him very much. I have just ridden into camp 
on Muley,* with a prongbuck strapped behind the 
saddle; I was out six hours before shooting it. Then 
we all sat down on the ground in the shade of the wagon 
and had dinner, and now I shall clean my gun, and then 
go and take a bath in a big pool nearby, where there 
is a large flat stone on the edge, so I don't have to get 
my feet muddy. I sleep in the buffalo hide bag and 
I never take my clothes off when I go to bed ! 

By the time we were twelve or thirteen we 
were encouraged to plan hunting trips in the 
West Father never had time to go with us, 
but we would be sent out to some friend of his, 
like Captain Seth Bullock, to spend two or 
three weeks in the Black Hills, or perhaps we 

* Fifteen years later when I was in Medora with Captain Seth Bul- 
lock, Muley was still alive and enjoying a life of ease in Joe Ferris's 
pastures. 



8 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

would go after duck and prairie-chicken with 
Marvin Hewitt. Father would enter into all 
the plans and go down with us to the range 
to practise with rifle or shotgun, and when we 
came back we would go over every detail of the 
trip with him, revelling in his praise when he 
felt that we had acquitted ourselves well. 

Father was ever careful to correct statements 
to the effect that he was a crack shot. He 
would explain how little being one had to do 
with success and achievement as a hunter. 
Perseverance, skill in tracking, quick vision, 
endurance, stamina, and a cool head, coupled 
with average ability as a marksman, produced 
far greater results than mere skill with a rifle 
— unaccompanied to any marked extent by 
the other attributes. It was the sum of all 
these qualities, each above the average, but 
none emphasized to an extraordinary degree, 
that accounted for father's great success in 
the hunting-field. He would point out many 
an excellent shot at a target who was of no use 
against game. Sometimes this would be due 
to lack of nerve. Father himself was equally 
cool and unconcerned whether his quarry was a 
charging lion or a jack-rabbit; with, when it 
came to the question of scoring a hit, the re- 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 9 

sultant advantage in the size of the former as 
a target. In other instances a good man at 
the range was not so good in the field because 
he was accustomed to shooting under conven- 
tional and regulated conditions, and fell down 
when it came to shooting under disadvanta- 
geous circumstances — if he had been running 
and were winded, if he were hungry or wet, 
or tired, or feeling the sun, if he were uncertain 
of the wind or the range. Sometimes, of 
course, a crack shot possesses all the other 
qualities; such is the case with Stewart Edward 
White, whom Cuninghame classified as the 
best shot with whom he had hunted in all his 
twenty-five years in the wilds. Father shot 
on a par with Cuninghame, and a good deal 
better than I, though not as well as Tarleton. 

I have often heard father regret the fact 
that he did not care for shooting with the shot- 
gun. He pointed out that it was naturally 
the most accessible and least expensive form 
of hunting. His eyesight made it almost 
impossible for him to attain much skill with a 
shotgun, and although as a boy and young 
man he went off after duck for sport, in later 
years he never used a shotgun except for 
collecting specimens or shooting for the pot. 



10 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

He continually encouraged us to learn to shoot 
with the gun. In a letter he wrote me to Eu- 
rope when I was off after chamois he said: "I 
have played tennis a little with both Archie 
and Quentin, and have shot with the rifle with 
Archie and seen that he has practised shot- 
gun shooting with Seaman." 

When my brother and myself were ten and 
eight, respectively, father took us and four of 
our cousins of approximately the same ages to 
the Great South Bay for a cruise, with some 
fishing and bird-shooting thrown in, as the 
guest of Regis Post. It was a genuine sacri- 
fice on father's part, for he loathed sailing, 
detested fishing, and was, to say the least, luke- 
warm about bird-shooting. Rowing was the 
only method of progression by water for which 
he cared. The trip was a great success, how- 
ever, and father enjoyed it more than he an- 
ticipated, for with the help of our host he in- 
structed us in caring for ourselves and our 
firearms. I had a venerable 12-bore pin-fire 
gun which was the first weapon my father ever 
owned. It was usually known in the family as 
the "rust bore" because in the course of its 
eventful career it had become so pitted and 
scarred with rust that you could put in as much 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 11 

time as you wished cleaning and oiling without 
the sHghtest effect. I stood in no little awe of 
the pin-fire because of its recoil when fired, and 
as I was in addition a miserably poor shot, my 
bag on the Great South Bay trip was not 
large. It consisted of one reedbird, which 
father with infinite pains and determination 
at length succeeded in enabling me to shoot. 
I am sure he never spent more time and effort 
on the most diflScult stalk after some coveted 
trophy in the West or in Africa. 

Father's hunting experiences had been con- 
fined to the United States, but he had taken 
especial interest in reading about Africa, the 
sportsman's paradise. When we were small he 
would read us incidents from the hunting books 
of Roualeyn Gordon Gumming, or Samuel 
Baker, or Drummond, or Baldwin. These we 
always referred to as "I stories," because they 
were told in the first person, and when we were 
sent to bed we would clamor for just one more, 
a petition that was seldom denied. Before 
we were old enough to appreciate the adven- 
tures we were shown the pictures, and through 
Cornwallis Harris's beautiful colored prints 
in the Portraits of Game and Wild Animals of 
Southern Africa we soon learned to distinguish 



12 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the great beasts of Africa. The younger 
Gordon Gumming came to stay with us at 
Sagamore, and when father would get him to 
tell us hunting incidents from his own varied 
career, we listened enthralled to a really living 
**I story." To us he was knowa as the "Ele- 
phant Man," from his prowess in the pursuit of 
the giant pachyderm. 

Then there was also the "Shark Man." 
He was an Australian who told us most thrill- 
ing tales of encounters with sharks witnessed 
when among the pearl-divers. I remember 
vividly his description of seeing a shark at- 
tack one of the natives working for him. The 
man was pulled aboard only after the shark 
had bitten a great chunk from his side and ex- 
posed his heart, which they could see still 
beating. He said, "Master, master, big fish," 
before he died. 

The illustrations in Millais's Breath from the 
Veldt filled us with delight, and to this day I 
know of no etching that affects me as does the 
frontispiece by the author's father. It is 
called the "Last Trek." An old hunter is ly- 
ing dead beside his ox-wagon; near him squat 
two of his Kafir boys, and in the distance graze 
herds of zebra and hartebeeste and giraffe. 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 13 

Of the mighty hunters that still survived 
at that time, father admired most Mr. F. C. 
Selous. His books he knew almost by heart. 
Whenever Selous came to the United States 
he would stay with us, and father would sit 
up till far into the night talking of wild life 
in the open. Selous, at sixty-jBve, enlisted in 
the late war as a private; he rose to be captain, 
and was decorated with the D. S. O. for gal- 
lantry, before he fell, fighting the Germans 
in East Africa. No one could have devised a 
more fitting end for the gallant old fellow than 
to die at the head of his men, in a victorious 
battle on those plains he had roamed so often 
and loved so well, fighting against the worst 
and most dangerous beast of his generation. 

In 1887 father founded a hunting club 
called the "Boone and Crockett" after two 
of the most mighty hunters of America. No 
one was entitled to membership who had not 
brought down in fair chase three species of 
American big game. The membership was 
limited to a hundred and I well remember my 
father's pride when my brother and I qualified 
and were eventually elected members. The 
club interests itself particularly in the con- 
servation of wild life, and the establishment 



14 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

of game refuges. Mr. Selous and other Eng- 
lish hunters were among the associate mem- 
bers. 

In the summer of 1908 my father told me 
that when his term in the White House ended 
the following spring, he planned to make a 
trip to Africa, and that if I wished to do so I 
could accompany him. There was no need 
to ask whether I wanted to go. At school 
when we were writing compositions, mine al- 
most invariably took the form of some im- 
aginary journey across the "Dark Continent." 
Still, father had ever made it a practice to talk 
to us as if we were contemporaries. He would 
never order or even tell us to follow a certain 
line; instead, he discussed it with us, and let 
us draw our own conclusions. In that way we 
felt that while we had his unreserved backing, 
we were yet acting on our own initiative, and 
were ourselves responsible for the results. If 
a boy is forced to do a thing he often makes 
but a half-hearted attempt to succeed, and lays 
his failure to the charge of the person who 
forced him, although he might well have come 
through with flying colors had he felt that he 
was acting on his own responsibility. In his 
discussions with us, father could of course 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 15 

shape our opinions in what he thought the 
proper mould. 

In Hke manner, when it came to taking me 
to Africa father wanted me to go, but he also 
wanted me to thoroughly understand the pro's 
and con's. He explained to me that it was a 
holiday that he was allowing himself at fifty, 
after a very busy life — that if I went I would 
have to make up my mind that my holiday 
was coming at the beginning of my life, and 
be prepared to work doubly hard to justify 
both him and myself for having taken it. He 
said that the great danger lay in my being un- 
settled, but he felt that taken rightly the ex- 
perience could be made a valuable asset instead 
of a liability. After we had once finished the 
discussion and settled that I was to go, father 
never referred to it again. He then set about 
preparing for the expedition. Mr. Edward 
North Buxton was another African hunter 
whom he greatly admired, and it was to him 
and to Selous that he chiefly turned for aid 
in making his plans. It was often said of 
father that he was hasty and inclined to go 
off at half-cock. There was never any one who 
was less so. He would gather his informa- 
tion and make his preparations with pains- 



16 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

taking care, and then when the moment came 
to act he was thoroughly equipped and pre- 
pared to do so with that lightning speed that 
his enemies characterized as rash hot-headed- 
ness. 

Father always claimed that it was by dis- 
counting and guarding against all possible 
causes of failure that he won his successes. 
His last great battle, that for preparedness for 
the part that "America the Unready" would 
have to play in the World War, was true to 
his life creed. For everything he laid his 
plans in advance, foreseeing as far as was 
humanly possible each contingency to be en- 
countered. 

For the African expedition he made ready 
in every way. I was at the time at Harvard, 
and almost every letter brought some reference 
to preparations. One day it would be: "The 
Winchester rifles came out for trial and all 
of them were sighted wrong. I sent them 
back with rather an acid letter." Then again: 
"You and I will be so rusty when we reach 
Sir Alfred Pease's ranch that our first efforts 
at shooting are certain to be very bad. In 
March we will practise at Oyster Bay with the 
30-30 until we get what I would call the 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 17 

* rifle sense' back again, and this will make it 
easier for us when, after a month's sea trip, we 
take up the business of hunting." 

A group of thirty or forty of the most famous 
zoologists and sportsmen presented my father 
with a heavy, double-barrelled gun. "At last 
I have tried the double-barrelled Holland 
Elephant rifle. It is a perfect beauty and it 
shoots very accurately, but of course the re- 
coil is tremendous, and I fired very few shots. 
I shall get you to fire it two or three times at a 
target after we reach Africa, just so that you 
shall be thoroughly familiar with it, if, or when, 
you use it after big game. There is no ques- 
tion that except under extraordinary circum- 
stances it would be the best weapon for ele- 
phant, rhino, and buffalo. I think the 405 
Winchester will be as good for everything 
else." 

"About all my African things are ready now, 
or will be in a few days. I suppose yours are 
in good trim also [a surreptitious dig at a 
somewhat lackadaisical son.] I am pursuing 
my usual plan of taking all the precautions in 
advance." 

A few days later came another reference to 
the Holland & Holland: "The double-bar- 



18 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

relied four-fifty shot beautifully, but I was 
paralyzed at the directions which accompanied 
it to the effect that two shots must always be 
fired in the morning before starting, as other- 
wise from the freshly oiled barrels the first 
shot would go high. This is all nonsense and 
I shall simply have to see that the barrels are 
clean of the oil." The recoil of the big gun 
was so severe that it became a standing joke 
as to whether we did not fear it more than a 
charging elephant ! 

Father gave the closest attention to every 
detail of the equipment. The first provision 
lists prepared by his friends in England were 
drawn up on a presidential scale with cham- 
pagne and pate de foies gras and all sorts of 
luxuries. These were blue-pencilled and two 
American staples substituted — baked beans 
and canned tomatoes. Father always retained 
the appreciation of canned tomatoes gained in 
the early ranching days in the West. He would 
explain how delicious he had found it in the 
Bad Lands after eating the tomatoes to drink 
the juice from the can. In hunting in a tem- 
perate climate such as our West, a man can 
get along with but very little, and it is diflScult 
to realize that a certain amount of luxury is 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 19 

necessary in the tropics to maintain oneself 
fit. Then, too, in Africa the question of trans- 
portation was fairly simple — and almost every- 
where we were able to keep ourselves and the 
porters amply supplied with fresh meat. Four 
years later during the descent of the Duvida — 
the "River of Doubt" — we learned to our bitter 
cost what it meant to travel in the tropics as 
lightly equipped as one could, with but little 
hardship, in the north. It was not, however, 
through our own lack of forethought, but due 
rather to the necessities and shifting chances 
of a diflScult and dangerous exploring expedi- 
tion. 

Even if it is true as Napoleon said, that an 
army marches on its belly, still, it won't go far 
unless its feet are properly shod, and since my 
father had a skin as tender as a baby's, he 
took every precaution that his boots should 
fit him properly and not rub. "The modified 
duffle-bags came all right. I suppose we will 
get the cotton-soled shoes, but I do not know. 
How do you like the rubber-soled shoes? 
Don't you think before ordering other pairs 
it would be as well to wait until you see the 
army shoes here, which are light and somehow 
look as if they were more the kind you ordi- 



20 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

narily use? How many pairs have you now 
for the African trip, and how many more do 
you think you want ? " 

Father was fifty years old in the October be- 
fore we left for Africa, and the varied experi- 
ences of his vigorous Ufe had, as he used to 
say, battered and chipped him. One eye was 
to all intents useless from the effects of a 
boxing-match, and from birth he had been so 
astigmatic as to be absolutely unable to use a 
rifle and almost unable to find his way in the 
woods without his glasses. He never went off 
without eight or ten pairs so distributed 
throughout his kit as to minimize the possi- 
bility of being crippled through any ordinary 
accident. Even so, any one who has worn 
glasses in the tropics knows how easily they 
fog over, and how hopeless they are in the 
rains. It was a continual source of amazement 
to see how skilfully father had discounted this 
handicap in advance and appeared to be un- 
hampered by it. 

Another serious threat lay in the leg that 
had been injured when the carriage in which 
he was driving was run down by a trolley-car, 
and the secret service man with him was 
killed. In September, 1908, he wrote me from 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS n 

Washington: "I have never gotten over the 
effects of the trolley-ear accident six years ago, 
when, as you will remember, they had to cut 
down to the shin bone. The shock per- 
manently damaged the bone, and if anything 
happens there is always a chance of trouble 
which would be serious. Before I left Oyster 
Bay, while riding, I got a rap on the shin 
bone from a branch. This was either the cause 
or the occasion of an inflammation, which had 
grown so serious when I got back here that 
Doctor Rixey had to hastily take it in hand. 
For a couple of days it was uncertain whether 
we would not have to have another operation 
and remove some of the bones of the leg, but 
fortunately the doctor got it in hand all right, 
and moreover it has enabled me to learn just 
what I ought to do if I am threatened with 
similar trouble in Africa." 

His activity, however, was little hampered 
by his leg, for a few weeks later he wrote: 
"I have done very little jumping myself, and 
that only of the small jumps up to four feet, 
because it is evident that I have got to be 
pretty careful of my leg, and that an accident 
of at all a serious character might throw me 
out of gear for the African trip. This after- 



22 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

noon by the way, Archie Butt and I took a 
scramble down Rock Creek. It was raining 
and the rocks were sUppery, and at one point 
I sHpped off into the creek, but merely bruised 
myself in entirely safe places, not hurting my 
leg at all. When we came to the final and 
stiffest cliff climb, it was so dark that Archie 
couldn't get up." From which it may be 
seen that neither endurance nor skill suffered 
as a result of the accident to the leg. Still, as 
Bret Harte says, "We always wink with the 
weaker eye," and when anything went wrong, 
the leg was sure to be implicated. Father 
suffered fearfully with it during the descent 
of the River of Doubt. One of the most con- 
stant pictures of father that I retain is at Saga- 
more after dinner on the piazza. He would 
draw his chair out from the roofed-over part 
to where he could see the moon and the 
stars. When things were black he would often 
quote Jasper Petulengro in Borrow's Lavengro: 
"Life is sweet, brother. . . . There's day and 
night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, 
and stars, all sweet things; . . . and likewise 
there's a wind on the heath," and would add: 
"Yes, there's always the wind on the heath." 
From where he sat he looked across the fields 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 23 

to the dark woods, anc' over the tree-tops to 
th^ y with the changing twinkling Hghts of 
th< mall craft; across the bay to the string 
of kmps along the can ^eway leading to Centre 
Island, and beyond that again Long Island 
Sound with occasionally a "tail Fall Steamer 
light." For a while father would drink his 
coffee in silence, and then his rocking-chair 
would start c^eakin^ and he would say: "Do 
you remember that night in the Sotik when 
the gunbearers were skinning the big lion?" 
or "What a lovely camp that was under the 
big tree in the Lado when we were hunting the 
giant eland?" 

We get three sorts and periods of enjoyment 
out of a hunting trip. The first is when the 
plans are being discussed and the outfit assem- 
bled; this is the pleasure of anticipation. The 
second is the enjoyment of the actual trip it- 
self; and the third is the pleasure of retrospec- 
tion when we sit round a blazing wood-fire 
and talk over the incidents and adventures of 
the trip. There is no general rule to know 
which of the three gives the keenest joy. I 
can think of a different expedition in which 
each sort stands out in pre-eminence. Even 
if the trip has been exceptionally hard and the 



24 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

luck unusually bad, the pleasures of anticipa- 
tion and preparation cannot be taken away, 
and frequently the retrospect is the more satis- 
factory because of the diflSculties and discom- 
forts surmounted. 

I think we enjoyed the African trip most in 
the actuality, and that is saying a great deal. 
It was a wonderful "adventure" and all the 
world seemed young. Father has quoted in the 
foreword to African Game Trails: "I speak 
of Africa and golden joys." It was a line 
that I have heard him repeat to himself many 
times. In Africa everything was new. He 
revelled in the vast plains blackened with herds 
of grazing antelope. From his exhaustive 
reading and retentive memory he knew al- 
ready the history and the habits of the dif- 
ferent species of game. When we left camp 
in the early morning we never could foretell 
what we would run into by nightfall — we were 
prepared for anything from an elephant to 
a dik-dik — the graceful diminutive antelope 
no larger than a hare. In the evening, after 
we had eaten we would gather round the camp- 
fire — for in the highlands the evenings were 
chilly — and each would tell the adventures of 
his day, and discuss plans for the morrow. 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 25 

Then we would start paralleling and compar- 
ing. Father would illustrate with adventures 
of the old days in our West; Cuninghame 
from the lore gathered during his twenty years 
in Africa would relate some anecdote, and 
Mearns would talk of life among the wild 
tribes in the Philippines. 

Colonel Mearns belonged to the medical 
corps in the army. He had come with us as 
an ornithologist, for throughout his military 
career he had been actively interested in send- 
ing specimens from wherever he was serving 
to the Smithsonian National Museum in Wash- 
ington. His mild manner belied his fearless 
and intrepid disposition. A member of the 
expedition once came into camp with an ac- 
count of the doctor, whom he had just run 
across — looking too benevolent for this world, 
engaged in what our companion described as 
"slaughtering humming-birds, pm-suing them 
from bush to bush." One of his Philippine 
adventures filled us with a delighted interest 
for which I don't believe he fully appreciated 
the reason. He told us how with a small force 
he had been hemmed in by a large number of 
Moros. The Americans took refuge in a 
stockade on a hilltop. The Moros advanced 



26 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

time and again with the greatest gallantry, 
and Mearns explained how sorry he felt for 
them as they fell — some under the very walls 
of the stockade. In a musing tone at the 
end he added: "I slipped out of the stotkade 
that night and collected a most interesting 
series of skulls; they're in the Smithsonian 
to-day." 

Father was the rare combination of a born 
raconteur — with the gift of putting in all the 
little details that make a story — and an equally 
good listener. He was an adept at drawing 
people out. His interest was so whole-hearted 
and obvious that the shyest, most tongue- 
tied adventurer found himself speaking with 
entire freedom. Every one with whom we came 
in contact fell under the charm. Father in- 
variably thought the best of a person, and for 
that very reason every one was at his best with 
him — and felt bound to justify his confidence 
and judgment. With him I always thought 
of the Scotch story of the MacGregor who, 
when a friend told him that it was an outrage 
that at a certain banquet he should have been 
given a seat half-way down the table, replied: 
''Where the MacGregor sits is the head of the 
table ! " Where father sat was always the head 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 27 

of the table, and yet he treated every one with 
the same courtesy and simpHcity, whether it 
was the governor of the Protectorate or the 
poorest Boer settler. I remember how amazed 
some were at the lack of formality in his rela- 
tionship with the members of the expedition. 
Many people who have held high positions 
feel it incumbent on them to maintain a cer- 
tain distance in their dealings with their less 
illustrious fellow men. If they let down the 
barrier they feel, they would lose dignity. 
They are generally right, for their superiority 
is not innate, but the result of chance. With 
father it was otherwise. The respect and 
consideration felt for him could not have been 
greater, and would certainly not have been 
so sincere, had he built a seven-foot barrier 
about himself. 

He was most essentially unselfish, and wanted 
no more than would have been his just due if 
the expedition, instead of being owing entirely 
to him, both financially and otherwise, had 
been planned and carried out by all of us. 
He was a natural champion of the cause of 
every man, and not only in his books would he 
carefully give credit where it was due, but he 
would endeavor to bring about recognition 



28 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

through outside channels. Thus he felt that 
Colonel Rondon deserved wide acknowledg- 
ment for the years of exploring in the Brazilian 
Hinterland; and he brought it to the attention 
of the American and British Geographical 
Societies. As a result, the former awarded 
the gold medal to Colonel Rondon. In the 
same way father championed the cause of 
the naturalists who went with him on his ex- 
peditions. He did his best to see that the 
museums to which they belonged should ap- 
preciate their services, and give them the op- 
portunity to follow the results through. When 
an expedition brings back material that has 
not been described, the museum publishes 
pamphlets listing the new species, and explain- 
ing their habitats and characteristics. This 
is rarely done by the man who did the actual 
collecting. Father, whenever it was feasible, 
arranged for the naturalists who had accom- 
panied or taken part in the collecting to have 
the credit of writing the pamphlets describing 
the results of their work. To a layman this 
would not seem much, but in reality it means 
a great deal. Father did all he could to en- 
courage his companions to write their experi- 
ences, for most of them had led eventful lives 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 29 

filled with unusual incident. When, as is 
often the case, the actor did not have the power 
of written narrative, father would be the first 
to recognize it, and knew that if inadequately 
described, the most eventful careers may be 
of no more interest than the catalogue of ships 
in the Odyssey, or the '* begat" chapters in the 
Bible. If, however, father felt that there ex- 
isted a genuine ability to write, he would spare 
no efforts to place the articles; in some cases 
he would write introductions, and in others, 
reviews of the book, if the results attained to 
that proportion. 

One of the most careful preparations that 
father made for the African expedition was 
the choosing of the library. He selected as 
wide a range as possible, getting the smallest 
copy of each book that was obtainable with 
decent reading type. He wanted a certain 
number of volumes mainly for the contrast 
to the daily life. He told me that he had 
particularly enjoyed Swinburne and Shelley 
in ranching days in the Bad Lands, because 
they were so totally foreign to the life and the 
country — and supplied an excellent antidote 
to the daily round. Father read so rapidly 
that he had to plan very carefully in order to 



30 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

have enough books to last him through a 
trip. He hked to have a mixture of serious 
and Hght Hterature — chaff, as he called the 
latter. When he had been reading histories 
and scientific discussions and political treatises 
for a certain length of time, he would plunge 
into an orgy of detective stories and novels 
about people cast away on desert islands. 

The plans for the Brazilian expedition came 
into being so unexpectedly that he could 
not choose his library with the usual care. 
He brought Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire in the Everyman's edition, 
and farmed out a volume to each of us, and 
most satisfactory it proved to all. He also 
brought Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, but 
when he tried to read them during the descent 
of the Rio da Duvida, they only served to fill 
him with indignation at their futility. Some 
translations of Greek plays, not those of Gil- 
bert Murray, for which he had unstinted praise, 
met with but little better success, and we were 
nearly as badly off for reading matter as we 
were for provisions. I had brought along a 
selection of Portuguese classics and a number 
of French novels. The former were useless 
to father, but Henri Bordeaux and Maurice 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 31 

Leblanc were grist to the mill. It was father's 
first introduction to Arsene, and he thoroughly 
enjoyed it — he liked the style, although for 
matter he preferred Conan Doyle. Father 
never cared very much about French novels — 
the French books that he read most were 
scientific volumes — ^histories of the Mongols — 
and an occasional hunting book, but he after- 
ward became a great admirer of Henri Bor- 
deaux. 

At last the time came when there was 
nothing left but the Oxford books of English 
and French verse. The one of English verse 
he had always dishked. He said that if there 
were to be any American poetry included, it 
should be at any rate a good selection. The 
choice from Longfellow's poems appealed to 
him as particularly poor, and I think that it 
was for this reason that he disapproved of the 
whole collection. Be that as it may, I realized 
how hard up for something to read father must 
be when he asked me for my Oxford book of 
English verse. For French verse father had 
never cared. He said it didn't sing sufficiently. 
"'The Song of Roland" was the one exception 
he granted. It was, therefore, a still greater 
proof of distress when he borrowed the Oxford 



32 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

book of French verse. He always loved to 
tell afterward that when he first borrowed it 
he started criticising and I had threatened to 
take it away if he continued to assail my 
favorites. In spite of all this he found it in- 
finitely preferable to Epictetus and Marcus 
Aurelius, and, indeed, became very fond of 
some of the selections. Villon and Ronsard 
particularly interested him. 

When riding along through the wilderness 
father would often repeat poetry to himself. 
To learn a poem he had only to read it through 
a few times, and he seemed never to forget 
it. Sometimes we would repeat the poem to- 
gether. It might be parts of the "Saga of King 
Olaf," or Kipling's "Rhyme of the Three 
Sealers," or "Grave of a Hundred Head," or, 
perhaps, "The Bell Buoy" — or again it might 
be something from Swinburne or Shelley or 
Keats — or the "Ballad of Judas Iscariot." He 
was above all fond of the poetry of the open, 
and I think we children got much of our love 
for the outdoor life, not only from actual ex- 
ample, but from the poetry that father taught 
us. 

There was an indissoluble bond between 
him and any of his old hunting companions. 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 33 

and in no matter what part of the world he 
met them, all else was temporarily forgotten 
in the eager exchange of reminiscences of old 
days. On the return from Africa, Seth Bul- 
lock, of Deadwood, met us in London. How 
delighted father was to see him, and how he 
enjoyed the captain's comments on England 
and things English ! One of the captain's first 
remarks on reaching London was to the ef- 
fect that he was so glad to see father that he 
felt like hanging his hat on the dome of Saint 
Paul's and shooting it off. We were reminded 
of Artemus Ward's classic reply to the guard 
who found him tapping, with his cane, an in- 
scription in Westminster Abbey: "Come, 
come, sir, you mustn't do that. It isn't per- 
mitted, you know!" Whereupon Artemus 
Ward turned upon him: "What, mustn't do 
it.^ If I like it, I'll buy it!" It was never 
difficult to trail the captain. When my sister 
and I were going through Edinburgh Castle, 
the local guide showed us an ancient gun, 
firing a cluster of five or six barrels. With 
great amusement he told us how an American 
to whom he was showing the piece a few days 
previously had remarked that to be shot at 
with that gun must be like taking a shower- 



34 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

bath. A few questions served to justify the 
conclusion we had immediately formed as to 
the identity of our predecessor. Father had 
him invited to the dinner given by the donors 
of the Holland & Holland elephant rifle. 

Of the hunting comrades of his early days, 
he told me that Mr. R. H. Munro Ferguson 
was the most satisfactory of all, for he met 
all requirements — always good-humored when 
things went wrong, possessing a keen sense of 
humor, understanding the value of silent com- 
panionship, and so well read and informed as 
to be able to discuss appreciatively any of the 
multitudinous questions of literature or world 
aflFairs that interested my father. 

In Washington when an old companion 
turned up he would be triumphantly borne off 
to lunch, to find himself surrounded by famous 
scientists, authors, senators, and foreign dip- 
lomats. Father would shift with lightning ra- 
pidity from one to the other — first he might 
be discussing some question of Indian policy 
and administration, next the attitude of a 
foreign power — then an author's latest novel — 
and a few moments later, he would have led 
on Johnny Goff to telling an experience with 
the cougar hounds. 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 35 

Any man who had hunted with father was 
ready to follow him to the ends of the earth, 
and no passage of time could diminish his 
loyalty. With father the personal equation 
counted for so much. He was so whole- 
heartedly interested in his companions — in 
their aspirations and achievements. In every 
detail he was keenly interested, and he would 
select from his library those volumes which 
he thought would most interest each compan- 
ion, and, perhaps, develop in him the love 
of the wonderful avocation which he himself 
found in reading. His efforts were not al- 
ways crowned with success. Father felt that 
our African companion, R. J. Cuninghame, the 
"Bearded Master," as the natives called him, 
being Scotch should be interested in Scott's 
novels, so he selected from the "Pigskin Li- 
brary" a copy of one of them — Waverley, I 
think it was. For some weeks Cuninghame 
made progress, not rapid, it is true, for he 
confessed to finding the notes the most in- 
teresting part of the book, then one day when 
they were sitting under a tree together in a 
rest during the noonday heat, and father in 
accordance with his invariable custom took out 
a book from his saddle-pocket, R. J. produced 



36 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

Waverley and started industriously to work on 
it. Father looked over his shoulder to see 
where he had got to, and to his amused de- 
light found that Cuninghame had been losing 
ground — he was three chapters farther back 
than he had been two weeks before ! 

We more than once had occasion to realize 
how largely the setting is responsible for much 
that we enjoy in the wilds. Father had told 
me of how he used to describe the bellowing 
of the bull elk as he would hear it ring out in 
the frozen stillness of the forests of Wyoming. 
He thought of it, and talked of it, as a weird, 
romantic call — until one day when he was 
walking through the zoological gardens ac- 
companied by the very person to whom he had 
so often given the description. As they passed 
the wapitis' enclosure, a bull bellowed, and 
father's illusions and credit were simultane- 
ously shattered, for the romantic call he had 
so often dwelt upon was, in a zoological park, 
nothing more than a loud and discordant sort 
of bray. 

In spite of this lesson we would see some- 
thing among the natives that was interesting 
or unusual and get it to bring home, only to 
find that it was the exotic surroundings that 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 37 

had been responsible for a totally fictitious 
charm. A wild hill tribe in Africa use anklets 
made from the skin of the colobus, a graceful, 
long-haired monkey colored black and white. 
When father produced the anklets at home, 
the only thing really noticeable about them 
was the fact that they smelt ! 

Another equally unfortunate case was the 
affair of the beehives. The same hill tribe 
was very partial to honey. An individual's 
wealth was computed in the number of bee- 
hives that he possessed. They were made 
out of hollowed logs three or four feet long 
and eight or ten inches in diameter. A wife 
or a cow was bought for an agreed upon num- 
ber of beehives, and when we were hunting, no 
matter how hot the trail might be, the native 
tracker would, if we came to a clearing and 
saw some bees hovering about the forest flow- 
ers, halt and offer up a prayer that the bees 
should deposit the honey in one of his hives. 
It seemed natural to bring a hive home, but 
viewed in the uncompromising light of the 
North Shore of Long Island it was merely a 
characterless, uninteresting log. 

Not the least of the many delights of being 
a hunting companion of father's was his 



38 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

humor. No one could tell a better story, 
whether it was what he used to call one of 
his ''old grouse in the gunroom" stories, or 
an account, with sidelights, of a contempo- 
raneous adventure. The former had to do 
with incidents in his early career in the cow- 
camps of the Dakotas, or later on with the 
regiment in Cuba — and phrases and incidents 
of them soon became coin-current in the ex- 
pedition. Father's humor was never under 
any circumstances ill-natured, or of such a 
sort as might make its object feel uncomforta- 
ble. If anything amusing occurred to a mem- 
ber of the expedition, father would embroider 
the happening in inimitable fashion, but al- 
ways in such a way that the victim himself was 
the person most amused. The accompanying 
drawing will serve as illustration. Father and 
I had gone out to get some buck to eke out the 
food-supply for the porters. We separated, 
but some time later I caught sight of father 
and thought I would join him and return to 
camp. I didn't pay particular attention to 
what he was doing, and as he was some way 
off I failed to notice that he was walking 
stooped to keep concealed by a rise of ground 
from some buck he was stalking. The result 
was the picture. 



I ■/,■ 



'-^" 









'f^<r% H-M^ 



J 



iri^^ Mc^f^, ,^'.^ ..^.^.yf 





V 

( 2r^%.^''<'^ ( I 'crt<^ try Cilf Ltj(^^ /yO'^ 

a^.-c( CQ ^f i Jo-i^^ /'jr-^cr 6^^:£4^ crx^ 




:^. 




=<^^»-— ^ 



Cb\A^ -^ ^' ^^ ^/^ (^f/\ «^^ 1 ' 



^f t(cU\£^ Pc^'\^ - f f - &^ c^ 






• v^vt 



^ *v/5 -kj 



o- f <,^- /• 



l*^. 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 39 

Before we started on the serious exploring 
part of the BraziKan trip, we paid visits to 
several fazendas or ranches in the state of 
Matto Grosso, with the purpose of hunting 
jaguar, as well as the lesser game of the coun- 
try. One of the fazendas at which we stayed 
belonged to the governor of the state. When 
we were wakened before daylight to start off 
on the hunt we were given, in Brazilian fashion, 
the small cup of black coffee and piece of bread 
which constitutes the native Brazilian break- 
fast. We would then sally forth to return 
to the ranch not before noon, and sometimes 
much later, as the hunting luck dictated. 
We would find an enormous lunch waiting for 
us at the house. Father, who was accustomed 
to an American breakfast, remarked regret- 
fully that he wished the lunch were divided, 
or that at least part of it were used to supple- 
ment the black coffee of daybreak. The sec- 
ond morning, as I went down the hall, the 
dining-room door was ajar, and I caught sight 
of the table laden with the cold meats and 
salads that were to serve as part of our elabo- 
rate luncheon many dim hours hence. I 
hurried back to tell father, and we tiptoed 
cautiously into the dining-room, closing the 



40 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

door noiselessly behind us. While we were 
engaged in making rapid despatch of a cold 
chicken, we heard our hosts calling, and the 
next minute the head of the house popped in 
the door! As father said afterward, we felt 
and looked like two small boys caught stealing 
jam in the pantry. 

The Brazilian exploration was not so care- 
fully planned as the African trip, because 
father had not intended to make much of an 
expedition. The first time he mentioned the 
idea was in April, 1913, in reply to a letter I 
wrote from Sao Paulo describing a short hunt- 
ing expedition that I had made. "The forest 
must be lovely; some time I must get down to 
see you, and we'll take a fortnight's outing, 
and you shall hunt and I'll act as what in the 
North Woods we used to call 'Wangan man,' 
and keep camp!" 

Four months later he wrote that he was 
planning to come down and see me; that he 
had been asked to make addresses in Brazil, 
Argentina, and Chile, and "I shall take a 
naturalist with me, if, as I hope, I return via 
Paraguay and the Amazon." At the time it 
did not look as if it would be possible for me to 
go on the trip. In father's next letter he said 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 41 

that after he left me, ''instiead of returning in 
the ordinary tourist Bryan-Bryce-way, I am 
going to see if it is possible to work across from 
the Plata into the valley of the Amazon, and 
come out through the Brazilian forest. This 
may not be possible. It won't be anything like 
our African trip. There will be no hunting 
and no adventures, so that I shall not have the 
pang I otherwise would about not taking you 
along." These plans were amplified and ex- 
tended a certain amount, but in the last letter 
I received they didn't include a very serious 
expedition. 

"I shall take the Springfield and the Fox 
on my trip, but I shall not expect to do any 
game-shooting. I think it would need the 
Bwana Merodadi, [My name among the na- 
tives in Africa] and not his stout and rheumatic 
elderly parent to do hunting in the Brazilian 
forest. I shall have a couple of naturalists 
with me of the Heller stamp, and I shall hope 
to get a fair collection for the New York 
Museum — Fairfield Osborn's museum." 

It was at Rio that father first heard of the 
River of Doubt. Colonel Rondon in an ex- 
ploring expedition had crossed a large river 
and no one knew where it went to. Father 



42 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

felt that to build dugouts and descend the 
river offered a chance to accomplish some gen- 
uine and interesting exploration. It was more 
of a trip than he had planned for, but the 
Brazilian Government arranged for Colonel 
Rondon to make up an accompanying expedi- 
tion. 

When father went oflF into the wilds he was 
apt to be worried until he had done some- 
thing which would in his mind justify the ex- 
pedition and relieve it from the danger of being 
a fiasco. In Africa he wished to get at least 
one specimen each of the four great prizes — 
the lion, the elephant, the buffalo, and the 
rhinoceros. It was the lion for which he was 
most keen — and which he also felt was the 
most problematical. Luck was with us, and 
we had not been hunting many days before 
father's ambition was fulfilled. It was some- 
thing that he had long desired — indeed it is 
the pinnacle of most hunters' ambitions — 
so it was a happy cavalcade that rode back to 
camp in the wake of the natives that were 
carrying the lioness slung on a long pole. 
The blacks were chanting a native song of 
triumph, and father was singing ''Whack-fa-lal 
for Lannigan's Ball," as a sort of "chant pagan." 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 43 

Father was more fluent than exact in ex- 
pressing himself in foreign languages. As he 
himself said of his French, he spoke it "as if 
it were a non- Aryan tongue, having neither gen- 
der nor tense." He would, however, always 
manage to make himself understood, and never 
seemed to experience any difficulty in under- 
standing his interlocutor. In Africa he had 
a most complicated combination of sign-lan- 
guage and coined words, and though I could 
rarely make out what he and his gun-bearer 
were talking about, they never appeared to 
have any difficulty in understanding each other. 
Father could read Spanish, and he had not 
been in Brazil long before he could make out 
the trend of any conversation in Portuguese. 
With the Brazilians he always spoke French, 
or, on rare occasions, German. 

He was most conscientious about his writing. 
Almost every day when he came in from hunt- 
ing he would settle down to work on the articles 
that were from time to time sent back to 
Scribner's, This daily task was far more 
onerous than any one who has not tried it 
can imagine. When you come in from a long 
day's tramping, you feel most uninclined to 
concentrate on writing a careful and interest- 



44 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

ing account of the day's activities. Father 
was invariably good-humored about it, say- 
ing that he was paying for his fun. In Brazil 
when the mosquitoes and sand-flies were in- 
tolerable, he used to be forced to write swathed 
in a mosquito veil and with long gauntlets to 
protect hands and wrists. 

During the descent of the River of Doubt in 
Brazil there were many black moments. It 
was impossible to hazard a guess within a 
month or more as to when we would get through 
to the Amazon. We had dugout canoes, 
and when we came to serious rapids or water- 
falls we were forced to cut a trail around to 
the quiet water below. Then we must make 
a corduroy road with the trunks of trees over 
which to haul the dugouts. All this took a 
long time, and in some places where the river 
ran through gorges it was almost impossible. 
We lost in all six of the ten canoes with which 
we started, and of course much of our food- 
supply and general equipment. It was neces- 
sary to delay and build two more canoes — a 
doubly laborious task because of the axes 
and adzes which had gone down in the ship- 
wrecks. The Brazil nuts upon which we had 
been counting to help out our food-supply had 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 45 

had an off year. If this had not been so we 
would have fared by no means badly, for these 
nuts may be ground into flour or roasted or 
prepared in a number of different ways. An- 
other source upon which we counted failed 
us when we found that there were scarcely 
any fish in the river. For some inexplicable 
reason many of the tributaries of the Amazon 
teem with fish, while others flowing through 
similar country and under parallel conditions 
contain practically none. We went first onto 
half rations, and then were forced to still 
further reduce the issue. We had only the 
clothes in which we stood and were wet all 
day and slept wet throughout the night. 
There would be a heavy downpour, then out 
would come the sun and we would be steamed 
dry, only to be drenched once more a half -hour 
later. 

Working waist-deep in the water in an at- 
tempt to dislodge a canoe that had been thrown 
upon some rocks out in the stream, father 
slipped, and, of course, it was his weak leg that 
suffered. Then he came down with fever, and 
in his weakened condition was attacked with 
a veritable plague of deep abscesses. It can 
be readily understood that the entourage and 



46 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

environment were about as unsuitable for a 
sick man as any that could be imagined. Noth- 
ing but father's indomitable spirit brought 
him through. He was not to be downed by 
anything, although he knew well that the 
chances were against his coming out. He 
made up his mind that as long as he could, he 
would go along, but that once he could no 
longer travel, and held up the expedition, he 
would arrange for us to go on without him. 
Of course he did not at the time tell us this, 
but he reasoned that with our very limited 
supply of provisions, and the impossibility of 
living on the country, if the expedition halted 
it would not only be of no avail as far as he 
was concerned, but the chances would be 
strongly in favor of no one coming through. 
With it all he was invariably cheerful, and in 
the blackest times ever ready with a joke- 
Sick as he was, he gave no one any trouble. 
He would walk slowly over the portages, rest- 
ing every little while, and when the fever was 
not too severe we would, when we reached the 
farther end with the canoes, find him sitting 
propped against a tree reading a volume of 
Gibbon, or perhaps the Oxford book of verse. 
There was one particularly black night; 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 47 

one of our best men had been shot and killed 
by a useless devil who escaped into the jungle, 
where he was undoubtedly killed by the In- 
dians. We had been working through a series 
of rapids that seemed interminable. There 
would be a long carry, a mile or so clear go- 
ing, and then more rapids. The fever was 
high and father was out of his head. Doctor 
Cajazeira, who was one of the three Brazilians 
with us, divided with me the watch during the 
night. The scene is vivid before me. The 
black rushing river with the great trees tower- 
ing high above along the bank; the sodden 
earth under foot; for a few moments the stars 
would be shining, and then the sky would 
cloud over and the rain would fall in torrents, 
shutting out sky and trees and river. Father 
first began with poetry; over and over again 
he repeated "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a 
stately pleasure dome decree," then he started 
talking at random, but gradually he centred 
down to the question of supplies, which was, of 
course, occupying every one's mind. Part of 
the time he knew that I was there, and he 
would then ask me if I thought Cherrie had 
had enough to eat to keep going. Then he 
would forget my presence and keep saying to 



48 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

himself: "I can't work now, so I don't need 
much food, but he and Cherrie have worked 
all day with the canoes, they must have part 
of mine." Then he would again realize my 
presence and question me as to just how much 
Cherrie had had. How good faithful Ca- 
jazeira waked I do not know, but when his 
watch was due I felt him tap me on the shoul- 
der, and crawled into my soggy hammock to 
sleep the sleep of the dead. 

Father's courage was an inspiration never to 
be forgotten by any of us; without a murmur 
he would lie while Cajazeira lanced and drained 
the abscesses. When we got down beyond 
the rapids the river widened so that instead of 
seeing the sun through the canyon of the trees 
for but a few hours each day, it hung above us 
all the day like a molten ball and broiled us 
as if the river were a grid on which we were 
made fast. To a sick man it must have been 
intolerable. 

It is when one is sick that one really longs 
for home. Lying in a hammock all unwashed 
and unshaven, suffocating beneath a mos- 
quitO-net, or tortured by mosquitoes and sand- 
flies when one raises the net to let in a breath 
of air — it is then that one dreams of clean 



THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 49 

pajamas and cool sheets and iced water. I 
have often heard father say when he was 
having a bout of fever at home, that it was 
almost a pleasure to be ill, particularly when 
you thought of all the past discomforts of 
fever in the wilds. 

Father's disappointment at not being able to 
take a physical part in the war — as he has 
said, "to pay with his body for his soul's de- 
sire" — was bitter. Strongly as he felt about 
going, I doubt if his disappointment was much 
more keen than that of the British and French 
statesmen and generals, who so readily realized 
what his presence would mean to the Allied 
cause, and more than once requested in Wash- 
ington that he be sent. Marshal Joffre made 
such a request in person, meeting with the 
usual evasive reply. Father took his disap- 
pointment as he had taken many another in 
his life, without letting it harm his usefulness, 
or discourage his aggressive energy. *'In the 
fell clutch of circumstance he did not wince 
or cry aloud." Indeed, the whole of Henley's 
poem might well apply to father if it were 
possible to eliminate from it the unfortunate 
marring undercurrent of braggadocio with 
which father's attitude was never for an in- 



50 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

stant tinged. With the indomitable courage 
that knew no deterrent he continued to fight 
his battle on this side to make America's 
entry no empty action, as it threatened to be. 
He wrote me that he had hoped that I would 
be with him in this greatest adventure of all, 
but that since it was not to be, he could only 
be thankful that his four boys were permitted 
to do their part in the actual fighting. 

When in a little town in Germany my brother 
and I got news of my father's death, there kept 
running through my head with monotonous 
insistency Kipling's lines: 

"He scarce had need to doff his pride. 
Or slough the dress of earth, 
E'en as he trod that day to God 
So walked he from his birth, 

In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean 
mirth." 

That was my father, to whose comradeship 
and guidance so many of us look forward in 
the Happy Hunting-Grounds. 



II 

In Quest of Sable Antelope 



II 

IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 

It was a bright, sunny day toward the end 
of October, and I was walking along the streets 
of the old Portuguese town of Mombasa on the 
east coast of Equatorial Africa. Behind me, 
in ragged formation, marched some twenty- 
five blacks, all but four of them with loads 
on their heads; the four were my personal 
*'boys," two gun-bearers, a cook, and a tent- 
boy. They were scattered among the crowd, 
hurrying up those that tried to lag behind 
for a last farewell to the wives and sweethearts 
who were following along on either side, clad 
in the dark-blue or more gaudily colored sheets 
that served them for clothes. 

At length our heterogeneous assembly 
reached the white sands of the harbor, and 
amid much confusion we stowed away into a 
couple of long, broad dugouts and were ferried 
out to a dhow that lay moored not far from the 
shore. We set sail amid the shrill cries of the 

53 



54 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

women and a crowd of small children who, on 
om* approach, had scurried out of the water 
like so many black monitor lizards. 

We steered out across the bay toward a 
headland some two miles distant. There was 
just enough breeze to ruflBe the water, but the 
dhow sped along at a rate that belied appear- 
ances. Sprawling among their loads the men 
lit cigarettes and chatted and joked, talking 
of the prospects of the trip, or the recent gossip 
of Mombasa. The sailors, not knowing that 
I understood Swahili, began to discuss me 
in loud tones. An awkward silence fell upon 
the porters, who didn't quite know how to 
tell them. Mali, my tent-boy, who was 
sitting near me, looked toward me and smiled. 
When the discussion became a little too per- 
sonal, I turned to him and made a few perti- 
nent remarks about the crew. The porters 
grinned delightedly, and rarely have I seen 
more shamefaced men than those sailors. 

In far too short a time for all of us the dhow 
grounded on the other side and we jumped 
out and started to unload. A giant baobab- 
tree stood near the beach; a cluster of huts 
beneath it were occupied by some Swahilis 
who fished, and ran a small store, where my 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 55 

porters laid in a final supply of delicacies — 
sugar and tobacco. 

It is customary to have a native head man, 
but on this short trip I had decided to do with- 
out one, for though the porters were new, my 
personal boys were old friends. Accordingly, 
when all the loads were ready and neatly ar- 
ranged in line, I shouted ''Bandika!" Great 
muscular black arms caught the packs and 
swung them up into place on the head, and off 
we started, along the old coast trail, worn deep 
with the traffic of centuries, and leading on 
for several hundred miles with native villages 
strung along its length. Behind me strode 
my two gun boys, then came the porters, all 
in single file, their present regular order a 
strong contrast with our disordered progress 
through the streets of Mombasa. Mali and 
Kombo, the cook, brought up the rear to look 
out for stragglers, and help unfortunates to 
rearrange their loads more comfortably. 

A little way from the shore we passed an 
old Arab well; some women were drawing 
water from it, but at our approach they de- 
serted their earthen jars and hurried away 
with shrill ejaculations. Fresh from the more 
arid interior, I imagined that the men would 



56 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

fill their gourds, but they filed past without 
stopping, for this was a land of many streams. 

We continued on our way silently, now 
through stretches of sandy land covered with 
stunted bushes, now through native shambas, 
or cultivated fields, until we came upon a 
group of natives seated under a gigantic wide- 
spreading tree. It was a roadside shop, and 
the porters threw down their loads and shoul- 
dered their way to where the shopkeeper was 
squatting behind his wares — nuts, tobacco, 
tea, bits of brass wire, beads, and sweet- 
meats of a somewhat gruesome appearance. 
He was a striking-looking old fellow with a 
short gray beard. Pretty soon he came to 
where I was sitting with a measure of nuts 
for the white man; so in return I took out 
my tobacco-pouch and presented him with 
some of the white man's tobacco. 

After a few minutes' rest we set out again 
and marched along for some time until we 
came to a cocoanut-palm grove, where I de- 
cided to camp for the night. The natives we 
were among were called the WaNyika — the 
"children of the wilderness." 

Leaving the men to arrange camp under 
the supervision of the gun-bearers, I strolled 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 57 

over to a near-by village where there was a 
dance in full swing. The men were regaling 
themselves with cocoanut-wine, an evil-tast- 
ing liquid, made from fermented cocoanut- 
milk, they told me. The moon, almost at 
full, was rising when I returned to camp, and 
after supper I sat and smoked and watched 
"the night and the palms in the moonlight," 
until the local chief, or Sultani, as they called 
him, came up and presented me with some 
ripe cocoanuts, and sitting down on the ground 
beside me he puffed away at his long clay 
pipe, coughing and choking over the strong 
tobacco I had given him, but apparently en- 
joying it all immensely. When he left I re- 
mained alone, unable for some time to make 
up my mind to go to bed, such was the spell 
of the tropic moonlight and the distant half- 
heard songs of the dancing "children of the 
wilderness." 

Early next morning we were on our way, 
and that night were camped a few hundred 
yards from the village of a grizzled old Sultani, 
whose domains lay in the heart of the sable 
country, for it was in search of these handsome 
antelopes that I had come. In southern Africa 
the adult males of the species are almost black. 



58 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

with white beUies, but here they w^ere not so 
dark in color, resembhng more nearly the 
southern female sable, which is a dark red- 
dish brown. Both sexes carry long horns that 
sweep back in a graceful curve over the shoul- 
ders, those of the male much heavier and 
longer, sometimes, in the south, attaining five 
feet in length. The sable antelope is a savage 
animal, and when provoked, will attack man 
or beast. The rapier-like horns prove an effec- 
tive weapon as many a dog has learned to its 
cost. 

My tent was pitched beneath one of the large 
shade-trees in which the country abounds. 
This one was the village council-tree, and when 
I arrived the old men were seated beneath it 
on little wooden stools. These were each 
hacked out of a single log and were only five 
or six inches high. The owner carried his 
stool with him wherever he went, slinging it 
over his shoulder on a bit of rawhide or a 
chain. 

There was trouble in the callage, for after 
the first formal greetings were over the old 
chief told me that one of his sons had just 
died. There was about to be held a dance in 
his memory, and he led me over to watch it. 




y. 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 59 

We arrived just as the ceremony was starting. 
Only small boys were taking part in it, and it 
was anything but a mournful affair, for each 
boy had strung round his ankles baskets filled 
with pebbles that rattled in time with the 
rhythm of the dance. In piping soprano they 
sang a lively air which, unlike any native 
music I had hitherto heard, sounded distinctly 
European, and would scarcely have been 
out of place in a comic opera. 

When the dance was finished the Sultani 
came back with me to my tent, and sitting 
down on his stool beside me, we gossiped until 
I was ready to go to bed. I had given him a 
gorgeous green umbrella and a most meritorious 
knife, promising him further presents should 
success attend me in the chase. He, in addi- 
tion to the customary cocoanuts, had pre- 
sented me with some chickens and a large 
supply of a carrot-shaped root called mihogo; 
by no means a bad substitute for potatoes, 
and eaten either raw or cooked; having in 
the former state a slight chestnut flavor. 

The first day's hunting was a blank, for al- 
though we climbed hill after hill and searched 
the country with my spy -glasses, we saw noth- 
ing but some kongoni (hartebeeste) , and I had 



60 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

no intention of risking disturbing the country 
by shooting at them, much as the men would 
have Hked the meat. It was the rainy sea- 
son, and we were continually getting drenched 
by showers, but between times the sun would 
appear and in an incredibly short time we 
would be dry again. The Sultani had given 
me two guides, sturdy, cheerful fellows with 
no idea of hunting, but knowing the country 
well, which was all we wanted. We loaded 
them down with cocoanuts, for in the middle 
of the day when one was feeling tired and hot 
it was most refreshing to cut a hole in a cocoa- 
nut and drink the milk, eating the meat after- 
ward. 

The following day we made a very early 
start, leaving camp amid a veritable tropical 
downpour. For half an hour we threaded 
our way through the semi-cultivated native 
shambas; the rain soon stopped, the sun rose, 
and we followed an overgrown trail through a 
jungle of glistening leaves. Climbing a large 
hill, we sat down among some rocks to recon- 
noitre. Just as I was lighting my pipe I 
saw Juma Yohari, one of my gun-bearers, 
motioning excitedly. I crept over to him 
and he pointed out, three-quarters of a mile 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 61 

away, a small band of sable crossing a little 
open space between two thickets. The coun- 
try was difficult to hunt, for it was so furrowed 
with valleys, down the most of which there ran 
streams, that there was very little level land, 
and that little was in the main bush country — 
the Bara, as the natives called it. There were, 
however, occasional open stretches, but dur- 
ing the rainy season, as at present, the grass 
was so high everywhere that it was difficult 
to find game. We held a hurried consultation, 
Juma, Kasitura — ^my other gun-bearer — and 
myself; after a short disagreement we decided 
upon the course, and set out as fast as we 
safely could toward the point agreed on. It 
was exhausting work: through ravines, up 
hills, all amid a tangle of vines and thorns; 
and once among the valleys it was hard to 
know just where we were. When we reached 
what we felt was the spot we had aimed at, we 
could find no trace of our quarry, though we 
searched stealthily in all directions. I led 
the way toward a cluster of tall palms that 
were surrounded by dense undergrowth. A 
slight wind rose, and as I entered the thicket 
with every nerve tense, I heard a loud and most 
disconcerting crackle that caused me to jump 



62 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

back on to Yohari, who was close behind me. 
He grinned and pointed to some great dead 
palm-leaves pendant along the trunk of one 
of the trees that the wind had set in motion. 
The next instant I caught sight of a pair of 
horns moving through the brush. On making 
out the general outline of the body, I fired. 
Another antelope that I had not seen made off, 
and taking it for a female I again fired, bring- 
ing it down with a most lucky shot. I had 
hoped to collect male, female, and young for 
the museum, so I was overjoyed, believing that 
I had on the second day's hunting managed to 
get the two adults. Yohari and Kasitura 
thought the same, but when we reached our 
quarry we found them to be both males; the 
latter a young one, and the former, although 
full grown in body, by no means the tawny 
black color of an old bull. We set to work on 
the skins, and soon had them off. Juma took 
one of the Shenzies* and went back to camp 
with the skins, while Kasitura and I went on 
with the other. We returned to camp by 
moonlight that night without having seen 
any more game. The porters had gone out 

* Shenzi really means bushman, but it is applied, generally in a de- 
rogatory sense, by the Swahilis to all the wild natives, or "blanket 
Indians.'* 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 63 

and brought in the meat and there was a grand 
feast in progress. 

After some antelope-steak and a couple of 
cups of tea I tumbled into bed and was soon 
sound asleep. The next thing I knew I was 
wide awake, feeling as if there were fourscore 
pincers at work on me. Bounding out of 
bed, I ran for the camp-fire, which was still 
flickering. I was covered with ants. They 
had apparently attacked the boys sleeping 
near me at about the same time, for the camp 
was in an uproar and there was a hurrying of 
black figures, and a torrent of angry Swahili 
imprecations. There was nothing for it but 
to beat an ignominious retreat, and we fled 
in confusion. Once out of reach of reinforce- 
ments we soon ridded ourselves of such of our 
adversaries as were still on us. Fortunately 
for us the assault had taken place not long be- 
fore dawn, and we returned to camp safely by 
daylight. 

That day we moved camp to the top of a 
neighboring hill, about a mile from the vil- 
lage. I spent the morning working over the 
skins which I had only roughly salted the night 
before; but in the afternoon we sallied forth 
again to the hunt. 



64 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

We went through several unsuccessful days 
before I again came up with sable. Several 
times we had met with fresh tracks, and in 
each case Kasitura, who was a strapping Basoga 
from a tribe far inland and an excellent tracker, 
took up the trail and did admirable work. 
The country was invariably so dense and the 
game so wary that in spite of Kasitura's re- 
markable tracking, only on two occasions did 
we sight the quarry, and each time it was only 
a fleeting glimpse as they crashed off. I could 
have had a shot, but I was anxious not to kill 
anything more save a full-grown female or an 
old master bull; and it was impossible to de- 
termine either sex or age. 

On what was to be our last day's hunting 
we made a particularly early start and pushed 
on and on through the wild bushland, stopping 
occasionally to spy round from some vantage- 
point. We would swelter up a hill, down into 
the next valley among the lovely tall trees 
that lined the brook, cross the cool, rock- 
strewn stream, and on again. The sable fed 
in the open only in the very early morning 
till about nine o'clock, then they would retreat 
into the thickets and doze until four or five 
in the afternoon, when they would again come 



IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 65 

out to feed. During the intervening time our 
only chance was to run across them by luck, 
or find fresh tracks to follow. On that par- 
ticular day we climbed a high hill about noon to 
take a look round and have a couple of hours' 
siesta. I found a shady tree and sat down with 
my back against the trunk. Ten miles or so 
away sparkled and shimmered the Indian 
Ocean. On all sides stretched the wonderful 
bushland, here and there in the distance 
broken by little patches of half-cultivated 
land. There had been a rain-storm in the 
morning, but now the sun was shining 
undimmed. Taking from my hunting-coat 
pocket Sorrow's Wild Wales, I was soon climb- 
ing far-distant Snowdon with Lavengro, and 
was only brought back to realities by Juma, 
who came up to discuss the afternoon's cam- 
paign. We had scarcely begun when one of 
the Shenzies, whom I had sent to watch from a 
neighboring hill, came up in great excitement 
to say that he had found a large sable bull. 
We hurried along after him, and presently he 
pointed to a thicket ahead of us. Leaving 
the rest behind, Juma and I proceeded cau- 
tiously toward the thicket. We found two 
sable cows, which Juma felt sure were all 



66 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

that there were in the thicket, whereas I could 
not help putting some faith in the Shenzi 
who had been very insistent about the "big 
bull." I was convinced at length that Juma 
was right, so I took aim at the better of the 
cows. My shooting was poor, for I only 
crippled her, and when I moved up close for a 
final shot she attempted to charge, snorting 
savagely, but too badly hit to cause any 
trouble. 

We had spent some time searching for the 
bull, so that by the time we had the skin off, 
the brief African twilight was upon us. We 
had been hunting very hard for the last week, 
and were all of us somewhat fagged, but as we 
started toward camp I soon forgot my weari- 
ness in the magic of the night. Before the 
moon rose we trooped silently along, no one 
speaking, but all listening to the strange 
noises of the wilderness. We were following a 
rambling native trail, which wound along a 
deep valley beside a stream for some time 
before it struck out across the hills for camp. 
There was but little game in the country, still 
occasionally we would hear a buck that had 
winded us crashing off, or some animal splash- 
ing across the stream. In the more open 




o 

-£2 



O 

a 



si 

s 

o 






IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE 67 

country the noise of the cicadas, loud and 
incessant, took me back to the sound of the 
katydids in summer nights on Long Island. 
The moon rose large and round, outhning the 
tall ivory-nut palms. It was as if we were 
marching in fairyland, and with real regret I 
at length caught the gleam of the camp-fire 
through the trees. 

It was after ten o'clock, when we had had 
something to eat, but Juma, Kasitura, and I 
gathered to work on the sable, and toiled until 
we began to nod off to sleep as we skinned. 

Next morning I paid my last visit to the old 
Sultani, rewarding him as I had promised and 
solemnly agreeing to come back and live with 
hini in his country. The porters were joyful, 
as is always the case when they are headed 
for Mombasa. Each thought of the joyous 
time he would have spending his earnings, 
and they sang in unison as they swung along 
the trail— careless, happy children. I, too, 
was in the best of spirits, for my quest had been 
successful, and I was not returning empty- 
handed. 



Ill 

The Sheep of the Desert 



Ill 

THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 

I wished to hunt the mountain-sheep of the 
Mexican desert, hoping to be able to get a 
series needed by the National Museum. 

At Yuma, on the Colorado River, in the 
extreme southwestern corner of Arizona, I 
gathered my outfit. Doctor Carl Lumholtz, 
the explorer, had recently been travelling and 
hunting in that part of Mexico. In addition 
to much valuable help as to outfitting, he told 
me how to get hold of a Mexican who had 
been with him and whom he had found trust- 
worthy. The postmaster, Mr. Chandler, and 
Mr. Verdugo, a prominent business man, had 
both been more than kind in helping in every 
possible way. Mr. Charles TJtting, clerk of 
the District Court, sometime Rough Rider, 
and inveterate prospector, was to start off with 
me for a short holiday from judicial duties. 
To him the desert was an open book, and from 
long experience he understood all the methods 
and needs of desert travel. Mr. Win Proeb- 

71 



72 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

stel, ranchman and prospector, was also to 
start with us. He had shot mountain-sheep 
all the way from Alaska to Mexico, and was 
a mine of first-hand information as to their 
habits and seasons. I had engaged two 
Mexicans, Cipriano Dominguez and Eustacio 
Casares. 

On the afternoon of the 10th of August we 
reached Wellton, a little station on the South- 
ern Pacific, some forty miles east of Yuma. 
Win and his brother, Ike Proebstel, were ready 
with a wagon, which the latter was to drive 
to a water-hole some sixteen miles south, near 
some mining claims of Win's. August is the 
hottest month in the year in that country, a 
time when on the desert plains of Sonora the 
thermometer marks 140 degrees; so we decided 
to take advantage of a glorious full moon and 
make our first march by night. We loaded as 
much as we could of our outfit into the wagon, 
so as to save our riding and pack animals. We 
started at nine in the evening. The moon rode 
high. At first the desert stretched in unbroken 
monotony on all sides, to the dim and far-oflf 
mountains. In a couple of hours we came to 
the country of the saguaro, the giant cactus. 
All around us, their shafts forty or fifty feet 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 73 

high, with occasional branches set at grotesque 
angles to the trunk, they rose from the level 
floor of the desert, ghostly in the moonlight. 
The air seemed cool in comparison with the 
heat of the day, though the ground was still 
warm to the touch. 

Shortly before one in the morning we reached 
Win's water-hole — tank, in the parlance of 
the country — and were soon stretched out on 
our blankets, fast asleep. 

Next day we loaded our outfit on our two 
pack-mules and struck out across the desert 
for the Tinajas Altas (High Tanks), which 
lay on the slopes of a distant range of moun- 
tains, about four miles from the Mexican 
border. For generations these tanks have 
been a well-known stepping-stone in crossing 
the desert. There are a series of them, worn 
out in the solid rock and extending up a cleft 
in the mountainside, which, in time of rain, 
becomes the course of a torrent. The usual 
camping-place is a small plateau, a couple of 
hundred yards from the lowest tank. This 
plateau lies in a gulch and is sheltered on either 
hand by its steep and barren sides. A few 
hundred feet from the entrance, on the desert 
and scattered about among the cactus, lie 



74 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

some hundred and fifty graves — the graves of 
men who have died of thirst; for this is a grim 
land, and death dogs the footsteps of those 
who cross it. Most of the dead men were 
Mexicans who had struggled across the deserts 
only to find the tanks dry. Each lay where he 
fell, until, sooner or later, some other traveller 
found him and scooped out for him a shallow 
grave, and on it laid a pile of rocks in the 
shape of a rude cross. Forty-six unfortunates 
perished here at one time of thirst. They 
were making their way across the deserts to 
the United States, and were in the last stages 
of exhaustion for lack of water when they 
reached these tanks. But a Mexican outlaw 
named Blanco reached the tanks ahead of 
them and bailed out the water, after carefully 
laying in a store for himself not far away. By 
this cache he waited until he felt sure that his 
victims were dead; he then returned to the 
tanks, gathered the possessions of the dead, 
and safely made his escape. 

A couple of months previously a band of 
insurrectos had been camped by these tanks, 
and two newly made graves marked their 
contribution. The men had been killed in 
a brawl. 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 75 

Utting told us of an adventure that took 
place here, a few years ago, which very nearly 
had a tragic termination. It was in the 
winter season and there was an American 
camped at the tanks, when two Mexicans 
came there on their way to the Tule tanks, 
twenty-five miles away, near which they in- 
tended to do some prospecting. Forty-eight 
hours after they had left, one of them turned 
up riding their pack-mule and in a bad way 
for water. He said that they had found the 
Tule tanks dry, but had resolved to have 
one day's prospecting anyway; they had 
separated, but agreed at what time they 
were to meet. Although he waited for a long 
while after the agreed time, his companion 
never appeared, and he was forced to start 
back alone. 

Twenty-four hours after the return of this 
Mexican, the American was awakened in the 
night by hearing strange sounds in the bed 
of the arroyo. When he went down to in- 
vestigate them he found the lost Mexican; he 
was in a fearful condition, totally out of his 
head, and was vainly struggling to crawl up 
the bank of the arroyo, in order to make the 
last hundred yards across the plateau to the 



76 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

water-hole. He would never have reached it 
alone. By careful treatment the American 
brought him round and then listened to his 
story. He had lost himself when he went oflF 
prospecting, and when he finally got his bear- 
ings he was already in a very bad way for 
water. Those dwelling in cool, well-watered 
regions can hardly make themselves realize 
what thirst means in that burning desert. 
He knew that although there was no water in 
the Tule wells, there was some damp mud in 
the bottom, and he said that all he wished to 
do was to reach the wells and cool himself off 
in the mud before he died. A short distance 
from the tanks the trail he was following di- 
vided, one branch leading to the Tule wells 
and the other back to the Tinajas Altas, twenty- 
five miles away. The Mexican was so crazed 
that he took the wrong branch, and before he 
realized his mistake he had gone some way past 
Tule; he then decided that it was the hand of 
providence that had led him past, and that he 
must try to make Tinajas Altas; a feat which 
he would have just missed accomplishing but 
for the American encamped there. 

The morning after we reached the tanks, 
the Tinah'alta, as they are called coUoquiaUy,, 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 77 

Win and I were up and ofif for the hunting- 
grounds by half past three; by sun-up we 
were across the border, and hunted along the 
foot of the mountains, climbing across the out- 
jutting ridges. At about nine we reached the 
top of a ridge and began looking around. 
Win called to me that he saw some sheep. 
We didn't manage things very skilfully, and 
the sheep took fright, but as they stopped I 
shot at a fine ram, Win's rifle echoing my shot. 
We neither of us scored a hit, and missed 
several running shots. This missing was mere 
bad luck on Win's part, for he was a crack shot, 
and later on that day, when we were not to- 
gether, he shot a ram, only part of which was 
visible, at a distance of three hundred and 
fifty yards. As the sun grew hotter we hunted 
farther up on the mountains, but we saw no 
more sheep, and returned to camp with Utting, 
who met us at a ravine near the border. 

After we got back to camp. Win and I 
filled some canteens, threw our blankets on 
one of the pack-mules, took Dominguez, and 
rode back over the border to camp in the dry 
bed of an arroyo near where we had been hunt- 
ing in the morning. We sent back the ani- 
mals, arranging with Dominguez to return with 



78 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

them the following day. Next morning at a 
httle after three we rolled out of our blankets, 
built a little fire of mesquite wood, and after 
a steaming cup of coffee and some cold frying- 
pan bread we shouldered our rifles and set 
out. At the end of several hours' steady walk- 
ing I got a chance at a fair ram and missed. 
I sat down and took out my field-glasses to 
try to see where he went; and I soon picked 
up three sheep standing on a great boulder, 
near the foot of a mountain of the same range 
that we were on. They were watching us 
and were all ewes, but I wanted one for the 
museum. So I waited till they lost interest 
in us, got down from the rock, and disappeared 
from our sight. I then left Win and started 
toward the boulder; after some rather careful 
stalking I got one of them at about two hun- 
dred yards by some fairly creditable shooting. 
The side of the mountain range along which 
we were hunting was cut by numerous deep 
gullies from two to three hundred yards across. 
After I had dressed the ewe I thought I would 
go a little way farther, on the chance of com- 
ing upon the ram I had missed; for he had 
disappeared in that direction. When I had 
crossed three or four ridges I sat down to look 




a 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 79 

around. It was about half past nine, the heat 
was burning, and I knew the sheep would soon 
be going up the mountains to seek the shelter 
of the caves in which they spend the noonday 
hours. Suddenly I realized that there were 
some sheep on the side of the next ridge stand- 
ing quietly watching me. There were four 
bunches, scattered among the rocks; three 
were of ewes and young, and there was one 
bunch of rams; in all there were sixteen sheep. 
I picked out the best ram, and, estimating 
the distance at two hundred and fifty yards, 
I fired, hitting, but too low. I failed to score 
in the running shooting, but when he was out 
of sight I hurried over and picked up the trail; 
he was bleeding freely, and it was not difiicult 
to follow him. He went half a mile or so and 
then lay down in a rock cave; but he was up 
and oflF before I could labor into sight, and 
made a most surprising descent down the 
side of a steep ravine. When I caught sight 
of him again he was half-way up the opposite 
wall of the ravine though only about a hundred 
yards distant; he was standing behind a 
large rock with only his quarters visible, but 
one more shot brought matters to a finish. 
The heat was very great, so I started right to 



80 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

work to get the skin off. A great swarro of 
bees gathered to the feast. They were villain- 
ous-looking, and at first they gave me many 
qualms, but we got used to each other and I 
soon paid no attention to them, merely brush- 
ing them off any part that I wanted to skin. 
I was only once stung, and that was when a 
bee got inside my clothing and I inadvertently 
squeezed it. Before I had finished the skin- 
ning I heard a shot from Win; I replied, and 
a little while afterward he came along. I shall 
not soon forget packing the skin, with the 
head and the leg-bones still in it, down that 
mountainside. In addition to being very 
heavy, it made an unwieldy bundle, as I had 
no rope with which to tie it up. I held the 
head balanced on one shoulder, with a horn 
hooked round my neck; the legs I bunched 
together as best I could, but they were con- 
tinually coming loose and causing endless trou- 
ble. After I reached the bottom, I left Win 
with the sheep and struck off for our night's 
camping-place. It was after eleven and the 
very hottest part of the day. I had to be 
careful not to touch any of the metal part of 
my gun; indeed, the wooden stock was un- 
pleasantly hot, and I was exceedingly glad that 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 81 

there was to be water waiting for me at 
camp. 

I got Dominguez and the horses and brought 
in the sheep, which took several hours. That 
afternoon we were back at Tinah'alta, with a 
long evening's work ahead of me skinning out 
the heads and feet by starlight. Utting, who 
was always ready to do anything at any time, 
and did everything well, turned to with a will 
and took the ewe ofiP my hands. 

The next day I was hard at work on the 
skins. One of the tanks, about four hundred 
yards from camp, was a great favorite with the 
sheep, and more than once during our stay the 
men in camp saw sheep co'me down to drink 
at it. This had generally happened when I 
was off hunting; but on the morning when I 
was busy with the skins two rams came down 
to drink. It was an hour before noon; for 
at this place the sheep finished feeding before 
they drank. The wind was blowing directly up 
the gulch to them, but although they stopped 
several times to stare at the camp, they even- 
tually came to the water-hole and drank. 
Of course we didn't disturb these sheep, for 
not only were they in the United States, but 
they were drinking at a water-hole in a desert 



82 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

country; and a man who has travelled the 
deserts, and is any sort of a sportsman, would 
not shoot game at a water-hole unless he were 
in straits for food. 

I had been hunting on the extreme end of 
the Gila Range and near a range called EI 
Viejo Hombre (The Old Man). After I shot 
my ram, in the confusion that followed, two 
of the young rams broke back, came down the 
mountain, passing quite close to Win, and 
crossed the plain to the Viejo Hombre Range, 
some mile and a half away. The bands of 
sheep out of which I shot my specimens had 
been feeding chiefly on the twigs of a small 
symmetrical bush, called by the Mexicans EI 
Yervo del Baso, the same, I believe, that Pro- 
fessor Hornaday in his Camp-Fires on Desert 
and Lava calls the white Brittle bush. They 
had also been eating such galleta-grass as 
they could find; it was on this grass that we 
depended for food for our horses and mules. 
Apparently the sheep of these bands had not 
been going to the water-hole; there were nu- 
merous places where they had been breaking 
down cactus and eating the pulp. In this 
country Win said that the rams and the ewes 
began to run together in October, and that in 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 83 

February the young were born. When the 
rams left the ewes, they took with them the 
yeariing rams, and they didn't join the ewes 
again until the next October. 

On the following day I left Utting and Proeb- 
stel and took the trail to the Tule tank. The 
two Mexicans were with me and we had two 
horses and three mules. We were travelling 
very light, for we were bound for a country 
where water-holes were not only few and far 
between but most uncertain. My personal 
baggage consisted of my washing kit, an extra 
pair of shoes, a change of socks, and a couple 
of books. Besides our bedding we had some 
coffee, tea, sugar, rice, flour (with a little bacon 
to take the place of lard in making bread), and 
a good supply of frijoles, or Mexican beans. 
It was on these last that we really Kved. As 
soon as we got to a camp we always put some 
frijoles in a kettle and started a little fire to 
boil them. If we were to be there for a couple 
of days we put in enough beans to last us the 
whole time, and then all that was necessary in 
getting a meal ready was to warm up the beans. 

It was between four and five in the after- 
noon when we left Tinah'alta, and though 
the moon did not rise until late, the stars 



84 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

were bright and the trail was clear. The 
desert we were riding through was covered 
with mesquite and creosote and innumerable 
choya cactus; there were also two kinds of 
prickly-pear cactus, and ocatillas were plenti- 
ful. The last are curious plants; they are 
formed somewhat on the principle of an um- 
brella, with a very short central stem from 
which sometimes as many as twenty spokes 
radiate umbrella-wise. These spokes are gen- 
erally about six feet long and are covered with 
thorns which are partially concealed by tiny 
leaves. The flower of the ocatilla is scarlet, 
and although most of them had stopped flower- 
ing by August, there were a few still in bloom. 
After about six hours' silent riding we reached 
Tule. The word means a marsh, but, needless 
to say, all that we found was a rock-basin 
with a fair supply of water and a very generous 
supply of tadpoles and water-lice. 

Next morning when we came to get break- 
fast ready we found we had lost, through a 
hole in a pack-sack, all of our eating utensils 
except a knife and two spoons; but we were 
thankful at having got off so easily. By three 
in the afternoon we were ready for what was 
to be our hardest march. We wished to get 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 85 

into the Pinacate country; and our next water 
was to be the Papago tank, which Casares 
said was about forty-five miles south of us. 
He said that in this tank we were always sure 
to find water. 

For the first fifteen miles our route lay over 
the Camino del Diablo, a trail running through 
the Tule desert — and it has proved indeed a 
"road of the devil" for many an unfortunate. 
Then we left the trail, the sun sank, twilight 
passed, and in spite of the brilliancy of the 
stars, the going became difficult. In many 
places where the ground was free from boulders 
the kangaroo-rats had made a network of 
tunnels, and into these our animals fell, often 
sinking shoulder-deep. Casares was leading, 
riding a hardy little white mule. While he 
rode he rolled cigarette after cigarette, and as 
he bent forward in his saddle to light them, 
for a moment his face would be brought into 
relief by the burning match and a trail of sparks 
would light up the succeeding darkness. Once 
his mule shied violently, and we heard the angry 
rattling of a side-winder, a sound which once 
heard is never forgotten. 

At about eight o'clock, what with rocks and 
kangaroo-rat burrows, the going became so 



86 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

bad that we decided to offsaddle and wait 
till the moon should rise. We stretched out 
with our heads on our saddles and dozed until 
about midnight, when it was time to start on 
again. Soon the desert changed and we were 
free of the hills among which we had been 
travelling, and were riding over endless rolling 
dunes of white sand. As dawn broke, the twin 
peaks of Pinacate appeared ahead of us, and 
the sand gave place to a waste of red and black 
lava, broken by steep arroyos. We had been 
hearing coyotes during the night, and now a 
couple jumped up from some rocks, a hundred 
yards away, and made oflF amongst the lava. 

By eight o'clock the sun was fiercely hot, 
but we were in among the foot-hills of Pinacate. 
I asked Casares where the tanks were, and he 
seemed rather vague, but said they were be- 
yond the next hills. They were not; but 
several times more he felt sure they were 
"just around the next hill." I realized that 
we were lost and resolved to give him one more 
try, and then if I found that he was totally at 
sea as to the whereabouts of the tank, I in- 
tended to find some shelter for the heat of the 
day, and, when it got cooler, to throw the 
packs oflf our animals and strike back to Tule. 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 87 

It is difficult to realize how quickly that fierce 
sun dries up man and beast. I doubt if in 
that country a really good walker could have 
covered ten miles in the noonday heat without 
water and without stopping. We could have 
made Tule all right, but the return trip would 
have been a very unpleasant one, and we 
would probably have lost some of our animals. 
However, just before we reached Casares's 
last location of the Papago tanks, we came 
upon an unknown water-hole, in the bed of an 
arroyo. The rains there are very local, and 
although the rest of the country was as dry as 
tmder, some fairly recent downpour had filled 
up this httle rocky basin. There were two 
trees near it, a mesquite and a palo verde, and 
though neither would fit exactly into the cate- 
gory of shade-trees, we were most grateful 
to them for being there at all. The palo verde 
is very deceptive. When seen from a distance. 
Its greenness gives it a false air of being a 
lovely, restful screen from the sun, but when 
one tries to avail oneself of its shade, the 
fallacy is soon evident. It is only when there 
IS some parasitical mistletoe growing on it 
that the palo verde offers any real shade. 
Ihe horses were very thirsty, and it was a 



88 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

revelation to see how they lowered the water 
in the pool. 

Dominguez was only about thirty years 
old, but he seemed jaded and tired, whereas 
Casares, who was white-haired, and must 
have been at least sixty, was as fresh as ever. 
Two days later, when I was off hunting on 
the mountains, Casares succeeded in finding 
the Papago tanks; they were about fifteen 
miles to our northwest, and were as dry as a 
bone! I later learned that a Mexican had 
come through this country some three weeks 
before we were in there. He had a number of 
pack-animals. When he found the Papago 
dry, he struck on for the next water, and suc- 
ceeded in making it only after abandoning his 
packs and losing most of his horses. 

We sat under our two trees during the heat 
of the day; but shortly after four I took my 
rifle and my canteen and went oflF to look for 
sheep, leaving the two Mexicans in camp. 
Although I saw no rams, I found plenty of 
sign and got a good idea of the lay of the land. 

The next four or five days I spent hunting 
from this camp. I was very anxious to get 
some antelope, and I spent three or four days 
in a fruitless search for them. It was, I be- 




Casares on his white mule 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 89 

lleve, unusually dry, even for that country, 
and the antelope had migrated to better feed- 
ing-grounds. Aside from a herd of nine, 
which I saw from a long way off but failed 
to come up with, not only did I not see any 
antelope, but I did not even jBnd any fresh 
tracks. There were many very old tracks, 
and I have no doubt that, at certain times of 
the year, there are great numbers of antelope 
in the country over which I was hunting. 

The long rides, however, were full of interest. 
I took the Mexicans on alternate days, and we 
always left camp before daylight. As the 
hours wore on, the sun would grow hotter and 
hotter. In the middle of the day there was 
generally a breeze blowing across the lava- 
beds, and that breeze was like the blast from 
a furnace. There are few whom the desert, 
at sunset and sunrise, fails to fascinate; but 
only those who have the love of the wastes 
born in them feel the magic of their appeal 
under the scorching noonday sun. Reptile 
life was abundant; lizards scuttled away in 
every direction; there were some rather large 
ones that held their tails up at an oblique 
angle above the ground as they ran, which 
gave them a ludicrous appearance. A species 



90 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

of toad whose back was speckled with red was 
rather common. Jack-rabbits and cottontails 
were fairly numerous, and among the birds 
Gambel's quail and the whitewings, or sonora 
pigeons, were most in evidence. I came upon 
one of these later on her nest in a palo-verde- 
tree; the eggs were about the size of a robin's 
and were white, and the nest was made chiefly 
of galleta-grass. The whitewings are very 
fond of the fruit of the saguaro; this fruit is 
of a reddish-orange color when ripe, and the 
birds peck a hole in it and eat the scarlet pulp 
within. It is delicious, and the Indians col- 
lect it and dry it; the season was over when I 
was in the country, but there was some late 
fruit on a few of the trees. When I was back 
in camp at sunset it was pleasant to hear the 
pigeons trilling as they flew down to the pool 
to drink. 

One day we returned to the camp at about 
two. I was rather hot and tired, so I made a 
cup of tea and sat under the trees and smoked 
my pipe until almost four. Then I picked up 
my rifle and went out by myself to look for 
sheep. I climbed to the top of a great crater 
hill and sat down to look around with my field- 
glasses. Hearing a stone move behind, I 



THE SHEEP OP THE DESERT 91 

turned very slowly around. About a hundred 
and fifty yards oflp, on the rim of the crater, 
stood six sheep, two of them fine rams. Very 
slowly I put down the field-glasses and raised 
my rifle, and I killed the finer of the rams. 
It was getting dark, so, without bestowing more 
than a passing look upon him, I struck off for 
camp at a round pace. Now the Mexicans, 
although good enough in the saddle, were no 
walkers, and so Dominguez saddled a horse, 
put a pack-saddle on a mule, and followed me 
back to where the sheep lay. We left the 
animals at the foot of the hill, and although 
It was not a particularly hard climb up to the 
sheep, the Mexican was blown and weary by 
the time we reached it. The ram was a good 
one. His horns measured sixteen and three- 
fourths inches around the base and were 
thirty-five inches long, so they were larger 
in circumference though shorter than my 
first specimen. He was very thin, however, 
and his hair was falhng out, so that one could 
pull it out in handfuls. All the sheep that I 
saw in this country seemed thin and in poor 
shape, while those near Tinah'alta were in 
very fair condition. The extreme dryness and 
scarcity of grass doubtless in part accounted 



92 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

for this, although the country in which I got 
my first two sheep was in no sense green. 
Making our way back to camp through the 
lava-fields and across the numerous gullies 
was a difiicult task. The horses got along 
much better than I should have supposed; in- 
deed, they didn't seem to find as much dif- 
ficulty as I did. Dominguez muttered that if 
the road past Tule was the Camino del Diablo, 
this certainly was the Camino del Infierno ! 
When we reached camp my clothes were as 
wet as if I had been in swimming. I set right 
to work on the headskin, but it was eleven 
o'clock before I had finished it; that meant 
but four hours' sleep for me, and I felt some- 
what melancholy about it. Indeed, on this 
trip, the thing that I chiefly felt was the need 
of sleep, for it was always necessary to make 
a very early start, and it was generally after 
sunset before I got back to camp. 

The Mexicans spoke about as much English 
as I spoke Spanish, which was very little, and 
as they showed no signs of learning, I set to 
work to learn some Spanish. At first our con- 
versation was very limited, but I soon got so 
that I could understand them pretty well. We 
occasionally tried to tell each other stories 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 93 

but became so confused that we would have 
to call it oflF. Dominguez had one English ex- 
pression which he would pronounce with great 
pride and emphasis on all appropriate or inap- 
propriate occasions; it was "You betcher!" 
Once he and I had some discussion as to what 
day it was and I appealed to Casares. "Ah, 
quien sabe, quien sabe?" (who knows, who 
knows?) was his reply; he said that he never 
knew what day it was and got on very com- 
fortably without knowing — a point of view 
which gave one quite a restful feeling. They 
christened our water-hole Tinaja del Bevora, 
which means the tank of the rattlesnake. 
They so named it because of the advent in 
camp one night of a rattler. It escaped and 
got in a small lava-cave, from out of which the 
men tried long and unsuccessfully to smoke it. 
At the place where we were camped our ar- 
royo had tunnelled its way along the side of a 
hill; so that, from its bed, one bank was about 
ten feet high and the other nearer fifty. In 
the rocky wall of this latter side there were 
many caves. One, in particular, would have 
furnished good sleeping quarters for wet 
weather. It was about twenty-five feet long 
and fifteen feet deep, and it varied in height 



94 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

from four to six feet. The signs showed that 
for generations it had been a favorite abode 
of sheep; coyotes had also Hved in it, and in 
the back there was a big pack-rat's nest. 
Pieces of the bisnaga cactus, with long, cruel 
spikes, formed a prominent part of the nest. 

After I had hunted for antelope in every 
direction from camp, and within as large a 
radius as I could manage, I was forced to ad- 
mit the hopelessness of the task. The water- 
supply was getting low, but I determined to 
put in another good long day with the sheep 
before turning back. Accordingly, early one 
morning, I left the two Mexicans in camp to 
rest and set off for the mountains on foot. I 
headed for the main peak of Pinacate. It was 
not long before I got in among the foot-hills. 
I kept down along the ravines, for it was 
very early, and as a rule the sheep didn't be- 
gin to go up the hills from their night's feed- 
ing until nine or ten o'clock; at this place, 
also, they almost always spent the noon hours 
in caves. There were many little chipmunks 
running along with their tails arched forward 
over their backs, which gave them rather a 
comical look. At length I saw a sheep; he 
was well up the side of a large hill, an old 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 95 

crater, as were many of these mountains. I 
made off after him and found there were steep 
ravines to be reckoned with before I even 
reached the base of the hill. The sides of 
the crater were covered with choyas, and the 
footing on the loose lava was so uncertain that 
I said to myself, "I wonder how long it will 
be before you fall into one of these choyas," 
and only a few minutes later I was gingerly 
picking choya burrs off my arms, which had 
come off worst in the fall. The points of the 
spikes are barbed and are by no means easy 
to pull out. I stopped many times to wait for 
my courage to rise sufficiently to start to work 
again, and by the time I had got myself free 
I was so angry that I felt like devoting the 
rest of my day to waging a war of retaliation 
upon the cactus. The pain from the places 
from which I had pulled out the spikes lasted 
for about half an hour after I was free of them, 
and later, at Yuma, I had to have some of the 
spines that I had broken off in my flesh cut 
out. 

An hour or so later I came across a very 
fine bisnaga, or "niggerhead," cactus. I was 
feeling very thirsty, and, wishing to save my 
canteen as long as possible, I decided to cut 



96 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the bisnaga open and eat some of its pulp, 
for this cactus always contains a good supply 
of sweetish water. As I was busy trying to 
remove the long spikes, I heard a rock fall, 
and looking round saw a sheep walking along 
the opposite side of the gully, and not more than 
four hundred yards away. He was travelling 
slowly and had not seen me, so I hastily made 
for a little ridge toward which he was heading. 
I reached some rocks near the top of the ridge 
in safety and crouched behind them. I soon 
saw that he was only a two-year-old, and 
when he was two hundred yards off I stood up 
to have a good look at him. When he saw 
me, instead of immediately making off, he 
stood and gazed at me. I slowly sat down and 
his curiosity quite overcame him. He pro- 
ceeded to stalk me in a most scientific manner, 
taking due advantage of choyas and rocks; 
and cautiously poking his head out from be- 
hind them to stare at me. He finally got to 
within fifty feet of me, but suddenly, and for 
no apparent reason, he took fright and made 
oflF. He did not go far, and, from a distance 
of perhaps five hundred yards, watched me as 
I resumed operations on the cactus. 

Not long after this, as I was standing on the 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 97 

top of a hill, I made out two sheep, half hidden 
in a draw. There was a great difference in 
the size of their horns, and, in the hasty glance 
I got of them, one seemed to me to be big 
enough to warrant shooting. I did not dis- 
cover my mistake until I had brought down my 
game. He was but a two-year-old, and, al- 
though I should have been glad of a good speci- 
men for the museum, his hide was in such poor 
condition that it was quite useless. However, 
I took his head and some meat and headed 
back for camp. My camera, water-bottle, 
and field-glasses were already slung over my 
shoulder, and the three hours' tramp back 
to camp, in the very hottest part of the day, 
was tiring; and I didn't feel safe in finishing 
my canteen until I could see camp. 

The next day we collected as much galleta- 
grass as we could for the horses, and, having 
watered them well, an operation which prac- 
tically finished our pool, we set out for Tule at 
a little after three. As soon as the Mexicans 
got a little saddle-stiff they would stand up 
in one stirrup, crooking the other knee over 
the saddle, and keeping the free heel busy at 
the horses' ribs. The result was twofold : the 
first and most obvious being a sore back for 



98 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the horses, and the second being that the horses 
became so accustomed to a continual tattoo to 
encourage them to improve their pace, that, 
with a rider unaccustomed to that method, 
they lagged most annoyingly. The ride back 
to Tule was as uneventful as it was lovely. 

On the next day's march, from Tule toward 
Win's tank, I saw the only Gila monster — 
the sluggish, poisonous lizard of the south- 
western deserts — that I came across through- 
out the trip. He was crossing the trail in 
leisurely fashion and darted his tongue out 
angrily as I stopped to admire him. Utting 
told me of an interesting encounter he once 
saw between a Gila monster and a rattlesnake. 
He put the two in a large box; they were in 
opposite corners, but presently the Gila mon- 
ster started slowly and sedately toward the 
rattler's side of the box. He paid absolutely 
no attention to the snake, who coiled himself 
up and rattled angrily. When the lizard got 
near enough, the rattler struck out two or 
three times, each time burying his fangs in 
the Gila monster's body; the latter showed not 
the slightest concern, and, though Utting 
waited expectantly for him to die, he appar- 
ently suffered no ill effects whatever from the 



THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT 99 

encounter. He showed neither anger nor pain; 
he simply did not worry himself about the rat- 
tler at all. 

We reached Wellton at about nine in the 
evening of the second day from Pinacate. 
We had eaten all our food, and our pack-ani- 
mals were practically without loads; so we 
had made ninety miles in about fifty-five hours. 
Dominguez had suffered from the heat on 
the way back, and at Win's tank, which was 
inaccessible to the horses, I had been obliged 
myself to pack all the water out to the animals. 
At Wellton I parted company with the Mexi- 
cans, with the regret one always feels at leav- 
ing the comrades of a hunting trip that has 
proved both interesting and successful. 



IV 

After Moose in New Brunswick 



IV 

AFTER MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 

It was early in September when the four of 
us — Clarke, Jamieson, Thompson, and myself 
— landed at Bathurst, on Chaleur Bay, and 
took the little railroad which runs twenty 
miles up the Nepisiquit River to some iron- 
mines. From that point we expected to pole 
up the river about forty miles farther and 
then begin our hunting. 

For the four hunters — "sports" was what 
the guides called us — there were six guides. 
Three of them bore the name Venneau; there 
were Bill Grey and his son Willie, and the 
sixth was Wirre (pronounced Warry) Cham- 
berlain. Among themselves the guides spoke 
French — or a corruption of French — which 
was hard to understand and which has come 
down from generation to generation without 
ever getting into written form. A fine-look- 
ing six they were, — straight, — with the Indian 
showing in their faces. 

103 



104 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

At the end of the third day of poling — a lazy 
time for the *' sports," but three days of mar- 
vellously skilful work for the guides — our 
heavily laden canoes were brought up to the 
main camp. From here we expected to start 
our hunting expeditions, each taking a guide, 
blankets, and food, and striking off for the 
more isolated cabins in the woods. My pur- 
pose was to collect specimens for the National 
Museum at Washington. I wanted moose, 
caribou, and beaver — a male and female of 
each species. Whole skins and leg-bones were 
to be brought out. 

A hard rain woke us, and the prospects 
were far from cheerful as we packed and pre- 
pared to separate. Bill Grey was to be my 
guide, and the "Popple Cabin," three miles 
away, was to be our shelter. Our tramp 
through the wet woods^ — pine, hemlock, birch, 
and poplar — ended at the little double lean- 
to shelter. After we had started a fire and 
spread our blankets to dry we set off in search 
of game. 

We climbed out of the valley in which we 
were camped and up to the top of a hill from 
which we could get a good view of some small 
barren stretches that lay around us. It was 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 105 

the blueberry season, and these barrens were 
covered with bushes, all heavily laden. We 
moved around from hill to hill in search of 
game, but saw only three deer. We'd have 
shot one of them for meat, but didn't care to 
run the chance of frightening away any moose 
or caribou. The last hill we climbed over- 
looked a small pond which lay beside a pine 
forest on the edge of a barren strip. Bill in- 
tended to spend a good part of each day watch- 
ing this pond, and it was to a small hill over- 
looking it that we made our way early next 
morning. 

Before we had been watching many minutes, 
a cow moose with a calf appeared at the edge 
of the woods. She hesitated for several min- 
utes, listening intently and watching sharply, 
and then stepped out across the barren on her 
way to the pond. Before she had gone far, 
the path she was following cut the trail we 
had made on our way to the lookout hill. She 
stopped immediately and began to sniflF at 
our tracks, the calf following her example; 
a few seconds were enough to convince her, 
but for some reason, perhaps to make doubly 
sure, she turned and for some minutes followed 
along our trail with her nose close to the ground. 



106 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

Then she swung round and struck off into the 
woods at a great slashing moose trot. 

Not long after she had disappeared, we got 
a fleeting glimpse of two caribou cows; they 
lacked the impressive ungainliness of the moose, 
and in the distance might easily have been 
mistaken for deer. 

It was a very cold morning, and throughout 
the day it snowed and sleeted at intervals. 
We spent the time wandering from hill to hill. 

For the next week we hunted industriously 
in every direction from the Popple Cabin. In 
the morning and the evening we shifted from 
hill to hill; the middle of the day we hunted 
along the numerous brooks that furrowed the 
country. With the exception of one or two 
days, the weather was uniformly cold and 
rainy; but after our first warm sunny day we 
welcomed rain and cold, for then, at least, we 
had no black flies to fight. On the two sunny 
days they surrounded us in swarms and made 
life almost unbearable; they got into our 
blankets and kept us from sleeping during the 
nights; they covered us with lumps and sores 
— Bill said that he had never seen them as 
bad. 

It was lovely in the early morning to stand 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 107 

on some high hill and watch the mist rising 
lazily from the valley; it was even more lovely 
to watch the approach of a rain-storm. The 
sunlight on some distant hillside or valley 
would suddenly be blotted out by a sheet of 
rain; a few minutes later the next valley would 
be darkened as the storm swept toward us, 
and perhaps before it reached us we could see 
the farther valleys over which it had passed 
lightening again. 

We managed to cover a great deal of ground 
during that week, and were rewarded by see- 
ing a fair amount of game — four caribou, of 
which one was a bull, a bull and three cow 
moose, and six does and one buck deer. I 
had but one shot, and that was at a buck deer. 
We wanted meat very much, and Bill said that 
he didn't think one shot would disturb the 
moose and caribou. He was a very large 
buck, in prime condition; I never tasted better 
venison. Had our luck been a little better, 
I would have had a shot at a moose and a cari- 
bou; we saw the latter from some distance, 
and made a long and successful stalk until 
Wirre, on his way from the main camp with 
some fresh supplies, frightened our quarry 
away. 



108 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

On these trips between camps, Wirre several 
times saw moose and caribou within range. 

After a week we all foregathered at the main 
camp. Clarke had shot a fine bear and Jamie- 
son brought in a good moose head. They 
started down-river with their trophies, and 
Thompson and I set out for new hunting- 
grounds. As Bill had gone with Jamieson, I 
took his son Willie, a sturdy, pony-built fellow 
of just my age. We crossed the river and 
camped some two miles beyond it and about 
a mile from the lake we intended to hunt. 
We put up a lean-to, and in front of it built a 
great fire of old pine logs, for the nights were 
cold. 

My blankets were warm, and it was only 
after a great deal of wavering hesitation that 
I could pluck up courage to roll out of them in 
the penetrating cold of early morning. On 
the second morning, as we made our way 
through dew-soaked underbrush to the lake, 
we came out upon a little glade, at the farther 
end of which stood a caribou. He sprang 
away as he saw us, but halted behind a bush 
to reconnoitre — the victim of a fatal curiosity, 
for it gave me my opportunity and I brought 
him down. Although he was large in body, he 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 109 

had a very poor head. I spent a busy morning 
preparing the skin, but in the afternoon we 
were again at the lake watching for moose. 
We spent several fruitless days there. 

One afternoon a yearhng bull moose ap- 
peared: he had apparently lost his mother, for 
he wandered aimlessly around for several hours, 
bewailing his fate. This watching would have 
been pleasant enough as a rest-cure, but 
since I was hunting and very anxious to get 
my game, it became a rather irksome affair. 
However, I could only follow Saint Augustine's 
advice, "when in Rome, fast on Saturdays," 
and I resigned myself to adopting Willie's 
plan of waiting for the game to come to us 
instead of pursuing my own inclination and 
setting out to find the game. Luckily, I had 
some books with me, and passed the days 
pleasantly enough reading Voltaire and Boi- 
leau. There was a beaver-house at one end 
of the lake, and between four and five the 
beaver would come out and swim around. I 
missed a shot at one. Red squirrels were very 
plentiful and would chatter excitedly at us 
from a distance of a few feet. There was one 
particularly persistent little chap who did 
everything in his power to attract attention. 



110 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

He would sit in the conventional squirrel atti- 
tude upon a branch, and chirp loudly, bouncing 
stiflBy forward at each chirp, precisely as if he 
were an automaton. 

When we decided that it was useless to hunt 
this lake any longer, we went back to the 
river to put in a few days hunting up and down 
it. I got back to the camp in the evening and 
found Thompson there. He had had no luck 
and intended to leave for the settlement in 
the morning. Accordingly, the next day he 
started down-stream and we went up. We 
hadn't been gone long before we heard what 
we took to be two shots, though, for all we 
knew, they might have been a beaver striking 
the water with his tail. That night, when we 
got back to camp, we found that, on going 
round a bend in the river about a mile below 
camp, Thompson had come upon a bull and a 
cow moose, and had bagged the bull. 

The next morning it was raining as if it 
were the first storm after a long drought, and 
as we felt sure that no sensible moose would 
wander around much amid such a frozen 
downpour, we determined to put in a day 
after beaver. In one of my long tramps with 
Bill we had come across a large beaver-pond. 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 111 

and at the time Bill had remarked how easy it 
would be to break the dam and shoot the 
beaver. I had carefully noted the location of 
this pond, so managed successfully to pilot 
Willie to it, and we set to work to let the water 
out. This breaking the dam was not the 
easy matter I had imagined. It was a big 
pond, and the dam that was stretched across 
its lower end was from eight to ten feet high. 
To look at its solid structure and the size of 
the logs that formed it, it seemed inconceiva- 
ble that an animal the size of a beaver could 
have built it. The water was above our 
heads, and there was a crust of ice around the 
edges. We had to get in and work waist- 
deep in the water to enlarge our break in the 
dam, and the very remembrance of that cold 
morning's work, trying to pry out logs with 
frozen fingers, makes me shiver. It was even 
worse when we had to stop work and wait 
and watch for the beavers to come out. They 
finally did, and I shot two. They were fine 
large specimens; the male was just two inches 
less than four feet and the female only one inch 
shorter. Shivering and frozen, we headed 
back for camp. My hunting costume had 
caused a good deal of comment among the 



112 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

guides; it consisted of a sleeveless cotton un- 
dershirt, a many-pocketed coat, a pair of short 
khaki trousers reaching to just above my 
knees, and then a pair of sneakers or of high 
boots — I used the former when I wished to 
walk quietly. My knees were always bare 
and were quite as impervious to cold as my 
hands, but the guides could never understand 
why I didn't freeze. I used to hear them 
solemnly discussing it in their broken French. 

I had at first hoped to get my moose by fair 
stalking, without the help of calling, but I 
had long since abandoned that hope; and 
Willie, who was an excellent caller, had been 
doing his best, but with no result. We saw 
several cow moose, and once Willie called out 
a young bull, but his horns could not have had 
a spread of more than thirty-five inches, and 
he would have been quite useless as a museum 
specimen. Another time, when we were crawl- 
ing up to a lake not far from the river, we found 
ourselves face to face with a two-year-old 
bull. He was very close to us, but as he hadn't 
got our wind, he was merely curious to find out 
what we were, for Willie kept grunting through 
his birch-bark horn. Once he came up to 
within twenty feet of us and stood gazing. 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 113 

Finally he got our wind and crashed off through 
the lakeside alders. 

As a rule, moose answer a call better at 
night, and almost every night we could hear 
them calling around our camp; generally they 
were cows that we heard, and once Willie 
had a duel with a cow as to which should 
have a young bull that we could hear in an 
alder thicket, smashing the bushes with his 
horns. Willie finally triumphed, and the bull 
headed toward us with a most disconcerting 
rush; next morning we found his tracks at 
the edge of the clearing not more than twenty 
yards from where we had been standing; 
at that point the camp smoke and smells 
had proved more convincing than Willie's 
calling-horn. 

Late one afternoon I had a good oppor- 
tunity to watch some beaver at work. We 
had crawled cautiously up to a small lake in 
the vain hope of finding a moose, when we 
came upon some beaver close to the shore. 
Their house was twenty or thirty yards away, 
and they were bringing out a supply of wood, 
chiefly poplar, for winter food. To and fro 
they swam, pushing the wood in front of them. 
Occasionally one would feel hungry, and then 



114 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

he would stop and start eating the bark from 
the log he was pushing. It made me shiver 
to watch them lying lazily in that icy water. 

I had already stayed longer than I intended, 
and the day was rapidly approaching when I 
should have to start down-river. Even the 
cheerful Willie was getting discouraged, and 
instead of accounts of the miraculous bags 
hunters made at the end of their trips, I began 
to be told of people who were unfortunate 
enough to go out without anything. I made 
up my mind to put in the last few days hunting 
from the Popple Cabin, so one rainy noon, 
after a morning's hunt along the river, we 
shouldered our packs and tramped off to the 
little cabin from which Bill and I had hunted. 
Wirre was with us, and we left him to dry out 
the cabin while we went off to try a late after- 
noon's hunt. As we were climbing the hill 
from which Bill and I used to watch the little 
pond, Willie caught sight of a moose on the 
side of a hill a mile away. One look through 
our field-glasses convinced us it was a good 
bull. A deep wooded valley intervened, and 
down into it we started at headlong speed, 
and up the other side we panted. As we 
neared where we believed the moose to be, I 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 115 

slowed down in order to get my wind in case I 
had to do some quick shooting. I soon picked 
up the moose and managed to signal Willie 
to stop. The moose was walking along at 
the edge of the woods somewhat over two 
hundred yards to our left. The wind was fa- 
vorable, so I decided to try to get nearer be- 
fore shooting. It was a mistake, for which I 
came close to paying dearly; suddenly, and 
without any warning, the great animal swung 
into the woods and disappeared before I could 
get ready to shoot. 

Willie had his birch-bark horn with him and 
he tried calling, but instead of coming toward 
us, we could hear the moose moving off in the 
other direction. The woods were dense, and 
all chance seemed to have gone. With a 
really good tracker, such as are to be found 
among some of the African tribes, the task 
would have been quite simple, but neither 
Willie nor I was good enough. We had given 
up hope when we heard the moose grunt on 
the hillside above us. Hurrying toward the 
sound, we soon came into more open country. 
I saw him in a little glade to our right; he 
looked most impressive as he stood there, 
nearly nineteen hands at the withers, shaking 



116 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

his antlers and staring at us; I dropped to 
my knee and shot, and that was the first that 
WiUie knew of our quarry's presence. He 
didn't go far after my first shot, but several 
more were necessary before he fell. We hur- 
ried up to examine him; he was not yet dead, 
and when we were half a dozen yards away, he 
staggered to his feet and started for us, but 
he fell before he could reach us. Had I shot 
him the first day I might have had some com- 
punction at having put an end to such a huge, 
handsome animal, but as it was I had no such 
feelings. We had hunted long and hard, and 
luck had been consistently against us. 

Our chase had led us back in a quartering 
direction toward camp, which was now not 
more than a mile away; so Willie went to 
get Wirre, while I set to work to take the 
measurements and start on the skinning. 
Taking off a whole moose hide is no light task, 
and it was well after dark before we got it 
off. We estimated the weight of the green 
hide as well over a hundred and fifty pounds, 
but probably less than two hundred. We 
bundled it up as well as we could in some 
pack-straps, and as I seemed best suited to the 
task, I fastened it on my back. 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 117 

The sun had gone down, and that mile back 
to camp, crawHng over dead falls and tripping 
on stones, was one of the longest I have ever 
walked. The final descent down the almost 
perpendicular hillside was the worst. When 
I fell, the skin was so heavy and such a clumsy 
affair that I couldn't get up alone unless I 
could find a tree to help me; but generally 
Willie would start me off again. When I 
reached the cabin, in spite of the cold night- 
air, my clothes were as wet as if I had been in 
swimming. After they had taken the skin oflf 
my shoulders, I felt as if I had nothing to 
hold me down to earth, and might at any 
moment go soaring into the air. 

Next morning I packed the skin down to 
the main camp, about three miles, but I found 
it a much easier task in the daylight. After 
working for a while on the skin, I set oflf to 
look for a cow moose, but, as is always the 
case, where they had aboimded before, there 
was none to be found now that we wanted 
one. 

The next day we spent tramping over the 
barren hillsides after caribou. WiUie caught a 
glimpse of one, but it disappeared into a pine 
forest before we could come up with it. On 



118 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the way back to camp I shot a deer for meat on 
our way down the river. 

I had determined to have one more try for 
a cow moose, and next morning was just 
going off to hunt some lakes when we caught 
sight of an old cow standing on the opposite 
bank of the river about half a mile above us. 
We crossed and hurried up along the bank, 
but when we reached the bog where she had 
been standing she had disappeared. There 
was a lake not far from the river-bank, and we 
thought that she might have gone to it, for 
we felt sure we had not frightened her. As 
we reached the lake we saw her standing at 
the edge of the woods on the other side, half 
hidden in the trees. I fired and missed, but as 
she turned to make off I broke her hind quar- 
ter. After going a little distance she circled 
back to the lake and went out to stand in the 
water. We portaged a canoe from the river 
and took some pictures before finishing the 
cow. At the point where she fell the banks of 
the lake were so steep that we had to give 
up the attempt to haul the carcass out. I 
therefore set to work to get the skin off where 
the cow lay in the water. It was a slow, cold 
task, but finally I finished and we set oflf down- 




Bringing out the trophies of the hunt 



MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK 119 

stream, Wirre in one canoe and Willie and my- 
self in the other. According to custom, the 
moose head was laid in the bow of our canoe, 
with the horns curving out on either side. 

We had been in the woods for almost a 
month, and in that time we had seen the 
glorious changes from summer to fall and fall 
to early winter, for the trees were leafless and 
bare. Robinson's lines kept running through 
my head as we sped down-stream through the 
frosty autumn day: 

"Come away! come away! there's a frost along the 

marshes. 
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes 

the dead black water; 
There's a moan across the lowland, and a wailing through 

the woodland 
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those 

that love us. 
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson 

chills of autumn 
Put off the summer's languor, with a touch that made us 

glad 
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we can- 
not follow, 
To the slopes of other valleys, and the sounds of other 

shores." 



V 

Two Book-Hunters in 
South America 



V 

TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH 
AMERICA 

In Collaboration with Mrs, Kermit Roosevelt 

The true bibliophile will always find time 
to exercise his calling, no matter where he 
happens to be, or in what manner he is en- 
gaged in making his daily bread. In some 
South American cities, more particularly in 
Buenos Ayres, there is so little to do outside 
of one's office that were there more old book- 
stores it would be what Eugene Field would 
have called a bibliomaniac's paradise. To 
us wanderers on the face of the earth serendip- 
ity in its more direct application to book-col- 
lecting is a most satisfactory pursuit; for it 
requires but little capital, and in our annual 
Sittings to "somewhere else" our purchases 
necessitate but the minimum of travelling 
space. There are two classes of bibliophiles — 
those to whom the financial side is of little or 
no consequence, and those who, like the clerk 

12S 



124 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

of the East India House, must count their 
pennies, and save, and go without other things 
to counterbalance an extravagance in the pur- 
chase of a coveted edition. To the former 
class these notes may seem overworldly in 
their frequent allusion to prices; but to its 
authors the financial side must assume its 
relative importance. 

Among the South American republics, Brazil 
undeniably takes precedence from a literary 
standpoint. Most Brazilians, from Lauro Mul- 
ler, the minister of foreign affairs, to the post- 
master of the little frontier town, have at some 
period in their lives published, or at all events 
written, a volume of prose or verse. It comes 
to them from their natural surroundings, and 
by inheritance, for once you except Cervantes, 
the Portuguese have a greater literature than 
the Spaniards. There is therefore in Brazil 
an excellent and widely read native literature, 
and in almost every home there are to be found 
the works of such poets as Gongalves Diaz and 
Castro Alves, and historians, novelists, and 
essayists like Taunay, Couto de Magalhaens, 
Alencar, and Coelho Netto. Taunay's most fa- 
mous novel, Innoceneia, a tale of life in the 
frontier state of Matto Grosso — '^the great 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 125 

wilderness" — has been translated into seven 
languages, including the Japanese and Polish. 
The literature of the mother country is also 
generally known; Camoes is read in the schools, 
and a quotation from the Lusiads is readily 
capped by a casual acquaintance in the re- 
motest wilderness town. Portuguese poets 
and playwrights like Almeda Garret, Bocage, 
Quental and Guerra Junquera; and historians 
and novelists such as Herculano, Ega de 
Queiroz, or Castello Branco are widely read. 

In Brazil, as throughout South America, 
French is almost universally read; cheap edi- 
tions of the classics are found in most homes, 
and bookstores are filled with modern French 
writers of prose or verse — sometimes in trans- 
lation, and as frequently in the original. Rio 
de Janeiro and Sao Paulo abound in old book- 
stores, which are to be found in fewer numbers 
in others of the larger towns, such as Manaos, 
Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Curytiba, or Porto 
Alegre. In the smaller towns of the interior 
one runs across only new books, although occa- 
sionally those who possess the *'flaire" may 
chance upon some battered treasure. 

The line which is of most interest, and in 
South America presents the greatest latitude, 



1S6 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

is undoubtedly that of early voyages and dis- 
coveries. Probably it was because they were 
in a greater or less degree voyagers or explorers 
themselves that the Americans and English 
who came to South America seventy or eighty 
years ago brought with them books of explora- 
tion and travel, both contemporary and an- 
cient. Many of these volumes, now rare in 
the mother country, are to be picked up for a 
song in the old bookstores of the New World. 
The accounts of the Conquistadores and 
early explorers, now in the main inaccessible 
except in great private collections or museums, 
have frequently been reprinted, and if written 
in a foreign tongue, translated, in the country 
which they describe. Thus the account of 
Pere Yveux was translated and printed in 
Maranhao in 1878, and this translation is now 
itself rare. We picked up a copy for fifty 
cents in a junk-store in Bahia, but in Sao Paulo 
had to pay the market price for the less rare 
translation of Hans Stade's captivity. Ulrich 
Schmidel's entertaining account of the twenty 
years of his life spent in the first half of the 
sixteenth century in what is now Argentina, 
Paraguay, and Brazil, has been excellently 
translated into Spanish by an Argentine of 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 127 

Frt^nch descent, Lafoyne Quevedo, the head of 
the La Plata museum. We had never seen 
the book until one day at the judicial auction 
held by the heirs of a prominent Argentine 
lawyer. Books published in Buenos Ayres 
are as a whole abominably printed, but this 
was really beautiful, so we determined to get 
it. The books were being sold in ill-assorted 
lots, and this one was with three other volumes; 
one was an odd volume of Italian poetry, one 
a religious treatise, and the third a medical 
book. Bidding had been low, and save for 
standard legal books, the lots had been going 
at two or three dollars apiece. Our lot quickly 
went to five dollars. There was soon only one 
man bidding against us. We could not under- 
stand what he wanted, but thought that per- 
haps the Schmidel was worth more than we 
had imagined. Our blood was up and we be- 
gan trying to frighten our opponent by sub- 
stantial raises; at fourteen he dropped out. 
The dealers in common with every one else were 
much intrigued at the high bidding, and clearly 
felt that something had escaped them. The 
mystery was solved when our opponent hurried 
over to ask what we wanted for the odd volume 
of Italian verse — it belonged to him and he 



128 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

had loaned it to the defunct lawyer shortly 
before his death. We halved the expenses 
and the lot, and, as a curious sequel, later found 
that the medical book which had quite acci- 
dentally fallen to our share was worth between 
fifteen and twenty dollars. 

Prices in Brazil seemed very high in com- 
parison with those of Portugal and Spain, 
but low when compared with Argentina. On 
the west coast we found books slightly less 
expensive than in Brazil, where, however, the 
prices have remained the same as before the 
war, though the drop in exchange has given 
the foreigner the benefit of a twenty-five per 
cent reduction. There are a fair number of 
auctions, and old books are also sold through 
priced lists, published in the daily papers. We 
obtained our best results by search in the 
bookshops. It was in this way that we got 
for three dollars the first edition of Castelleux's 
Voyage dans la Partie Septentrionale de VAme- 
rique, in perfect condition, and for one dollar 
Jordan's Guerra do Paraguay, for which a book- 
seller in Buenos Ayres had asked, as a tremen- 
dous bargain, twelve dollars. 

In Sao Paulo after much searching we found 
Santos Saraiva's paraphrase of the Psalms, a 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 129 

famous translation, quite as beautiful as our 
own English version. The translator was born 
in Lisbon. His father was a Jewish rabbi, but 
he entered the Catholic Church, became a 
priest, and went to an inland parish in southern 
Brazil. After some years he left the Church 
and settled down with a Brazilian woman in 
a small, out-of-the-way fazenda, where he 
translated the Psalms, and also composed a 
Greek lexicon that is regarded as a masterpiece. 
He later became instructor in Greek in Mac- 
kenzie College in Sao Paulo, confining his versa- 
tile powers to that institution until he died. 

The dearth of native literature in Buenos 
Ayres is not surprising, for nature has done 
little to stimulate it, and in its fertility much 
to create the commercialism that reigns su- 
preme. The country is in large part rolling 
prairie-land, and although there is an attrac- 
tion about it in its wild state, which has called 
forth a gaucho literature that chiefly takes 
form in long and crude ballads, the magic of 
the prairie-land is soon destroyed by houses, 
factories, dump-heaps, and tin cans. At first 
sight it would appear hopeless ground for a 
bibliophile, but with time and patience we 
found a fair number of old bookstores; and 



130 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

there rarely passes a week without a book 
auction, or at any rate an auction where some 
books are put up. 

Among the pleasantest memories of our life 
in Buenos Ay res are those of motoring in to a 
sale from our house in Belgrano, along the 
famous Avenida Alvear, on starlit nights, with 
the Southern Cross high and brilliant. Occa- 
sionally when the books we were interested in 
were far between, we would slip out of the 
smoke-laden room for a cup of unrivalled coffee 
at the Cafe Paulista, or to watch Charlie 
Chaplin as "Carlitos" amuse the Argentine 
public. 

The great percentage of the books one sees 
at auctions or in bookstores are strictly utili- 
tarian; generally either on law or medicine. 
In the old bookstores there are, as in Boston, 
rows of religious books, on which the dust lies 
undisturbed. In Argentine literature there 
are two or three famous novels; most famous 
of these is probably Marmol's Amalia, a blood- 
thirsty and badly written story of the reign of 
Rosas — the gaucho Nero. Bunge's Novela de 
la Sangre is an excellently given but equally 
lurid account of the same period. La Gloria 
de Don Ramiro, by Rodriguez Larreta, is a well- 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 131 

written tale of the days of Philip the Second. 
The author, the present Argentine minister 
in Paris, spent some two years in Spain study- 
ing the local setting of his romance. Most 
Argentines, if they have not read these novels, 
at least know the general plots and the more 
important characters. The Hterature of the 
mother country is Httle read and as a rule 
looked down upon by the Argentines, who are 
more apt to read French or even EngKsh. 
La Nacion, which is one of the two great morn- 
ing papers, and owned by a son of Bartholome 
Mitre, pubhshes a cheap uniform edition, 
which is formed of some Argentine reprints 
and originals, but chiefly of French and EngKsh 
translations. The latest publication is adver- 
tised on the front page of the newspaper, and 
one often runs across ''old friends" whose 
"new faces" cause a momentary check to the 
memory; such as La Feria de Vanidades, the 
identity of which is clear when one reads that 
the author is Thackeray. This "Biblioteca 
de la Nacion" is poorly got up and printed on 
wretched paper, but seems fairly widely read, 
and will doubtless stimulate the scarcely exist- 
ent literary side of the Argentine, and in due 
time bear fruit. Translations of Nick Carter 



132 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

and the "penny dreadfuls" are rife, but a na- 
tive writer, Gutierrez, who wrote in the seven- 
ties and eighties, created a national hero, 
Juan Moreira, who was a benevolent Billy the 
Kid. Gutierrez wrote many "dramas poli- 
ciales," which are well worth reading for the 
light they throw in their side touches on 
"gaucho" life of those days. 

Argentines are justifiably proud of Bartho- 
lome Mitre, their historian soldier, who was 
twice president; and of Sarmiento, essayist 
and orator, who was also president, and who 
introduced the educational reforms whose ap- 
plication he had studied in the United States. 
At an auction in New York we secured a pres- 
entation copy of his Vida de Lincoln^ written 
and published in this country in 1866. Mitre 
first published his history of General Belgrano, 
of revolutionary fame, in two volumes in 1859. 
It has run through many editions; the much- 
enlarged one in four volumes is probably more 
universally seen in private houses than any 
other Argentine book. The first edition is 
now very rare and worth between forty and 
fifty dollars; but in a cheap Italian stationery- 
store we found a copy in excellent condition 
and paid for it only four dollars and fifty cents. 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 133 

The edition of 1887 brings anywhere from 
twenty to thirty dollars. Many copies were 
offered at sales, but we delayed in hopes of a 
better bargain, and one night our patience 
was rewarded. It was at the fag end of a 
private auction of endless rooms of cheap and 
tawdry furniture that the voluble auctioneer 
at length reached the contents of the solitary 
bookcase. Our coveted copy was knocked 
down to us at eight dollars 

In native houses one very rarely finds what 
we would even dignify by the name of library. 
Generally a fair-sized bookcase of ill-assorted 
volumes is regarded as such. There are, how- 
ever, excellent legal and medical collections to 
be seen, and Doctor Moreno's colonial quinta, 
with its well-filled shelves, chiefiy volumes of 
South American exploration and development 
from the earliest times, forms a marked excep- 
tion — an oasis in the desert. We once went 
to stay in the country with some Argentines, 
who seeing us arrive with books in our hands, 
proudly offered the use of their library, to 
which we had often heard their friends make 
reference. For some time we were greatly 
puzzled as to the location of this much-talked- 
of collection, and were fairly staggered on 



134 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

having a medium-sized bookcase, half of which 
was taken up by a set of excerpts from the 
"world's great thinkers and speakers," in 
French, pointed out as ''the Hbrary." 

As a rule the first thing a family will part 
with is its books. There are two sorts of auc- 
tions — ^judicial and booksellers'. The latter 
class are held by dealers who are having bad 
times and hope to liquidate some of their stock, 
but there are always cappers in the crowd 
who keep bidding until a book is as high and 
often higher than its market price. The ma- 
jority of the books are generally legal or medi- 
cal; and there is always a good number of 
young students who hope to get reference books 
cheaply. Most of the books are in Spanish, 
but there is a sprinkling of French, and often 
a number of English, German, and Portuguese, 
though these last are no more common in Ar- 
gentina than are Spanish books in Brazil. 
At one auction there were a number of Por- 
tuguese lots which went for far more than they 
would have brought in Rio or Sao Paulo. 
Translations from the Portuguese are infre- 
quent; the only ones we can recall were of 
Camoes and Ega de Queiroz. In Brazil the 
only translation from Spanish we met with was 
of Don Quixote. 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 135 

English books generally go reasonably at 
auctions. We got a copy of Page's Paraguay 
and the River Plate for twenty-five cents, but 
on another occasion had some very sharp bid- 
ding for Wilcox's History of Our Colony in the 
River Plate ^ London, 1807, written during the 
brief period when Buenos Ayres was an English 
possession. It was finally knocked down to us 
at twelve dollars; and after the auction our 
opponent oflfered us twice what he had let us 
have it for; we don't yet know what it is 
worth. The question of values is a diflScult 
one, for there is little or no data to go upon; 
in consequence, the element of chance is very 
considerable. From several sources in the 
book world, we heard a wild and most im- 
probable tale of how Quaritch and several 
other London houses had many years ago sent 
a consignment of books to be auctioned in the 
Argentine; and that the night of the auction 
was so cold and disagreeable that the exceed- 
ingly problematical buyers were still further 
reduced. The auction was held in spite of 
conditions, and rare incunabula are reported 
to have gone at a dollar apiece. 

There was one judicial auction that lasted 
for the best part of a week — the entire stock 



136 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

of a large bookstore that had failed. They 
were mostly new books, and such old ones as 
were of any interest were interspersed in lots 
of ten or more of no value. The attendance 
was large and bidding was high. To get the 
few books we wanted we had also to buy a 
lot of waste material; but when we took this 
to a small and heretofore barren bookstore to 
exchange, we found a first edition of the three 
first volumes of Kosmos, for which, with a num- 
ber of Portuguese and Spanish books thrown 
in, we made the exchange. We searched long 
and without success for the fourth volume, 
but as the volumes were published at long 
intervals, it is probable that the former owner 
had only possessed the three. 

Our best finds were made not at auctions 
but in bookstores — often in little combination 
book, cigar, and stationery shops. We hap- 
pened upon one of these latter one Satur- 
day noon on our way to lunch at a little 
Italian restaurant, where you watched your 
chicken being most deliciously roasted on a 
spit before you. Chickens were forgotten, 
and during two hours' breathless hunting we 
found many good things, among them a bat- 
tered old copy of Byron's poems, which had 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 137 

long since lost its binding. Pasted in it was 
the following original letter of Byron's, which 
as far as we know has never before been pub- 
lished;* 

A Monsieur, 

Monsieur Galignani, 
18 Rue Vivienne, 
Paris. 

Sir: In various numbers of your journal I have 
seen mentioned a work entitled The Vampire, with the 
addition of my name as that of the author. I am not 
the author, and never heard of the work in question until 
now. In a more recent paper I perceive a formal an- 
nunciation of The Vampire, with the addition of an ac- 
count of my "residence in the Island of Mitylane," an 
island which I have occasionally sailed by in the course 
of travelling some years ago through the Levant — and 
where I should have no objection to reside — ^but where I 
have never yet resided. Neither of these performances 
are mine — and I presume that it is neither unjust nor 
ungracious to request that you will favour me by con- 
tradicting the advertisement to which I allude. If the 
book is clever, it would be base to deprive the real 
writer — whoever he may be — of his honours — and if 
stupid I desire the responsibility of nobody's dulness but 
my own. You will excuse the trouble I give you — the 
imputation is of no great importance — and as long as 
it was confined to surmises and reports — I should have 
received it as I have received many others — in silence. 

* Since writing this we have heard from a friend who is learned in 
books. He tells us that he believes the letter to be an excellent fac- 
simile pasted in the edition concerned. 



138 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

But the formality of a public advertisement of a book 
I never wrote, and a residence where I never resided — is 
a little too much — particularly as I have no notion of 
the contents of the one — nor the incidents of the other. 
I have besides a personal dislike to "vampires," and the 
little acquaintance I have with them would by no means 
induce me to divulge their secrets. You did me a much 
less injury by your paragraphs about "my devotion" 
and "abandonment of society for the sake of religion"- — 
which appeared in your Messenger during last Lent — 
all of which are not founded on fact — but you see I 
do not contradict them, because they are merely per- 
sonal, whereas the others in some degree concern the 
reader. . . . 

You will oblige me by complying with my request for 
contradiction. I assure you that I know nothing of the 
work or works in question — and have the honour to be 
(as the correspondents to magazines say) "your constant 
reader" and very , , 

humble Servt, ^^^^ 

To the editor of Galignani's Messenger. Etc., etc., etc. 
Venice, April 27, 1819. 

Curiously enough, the book itself had been 
published by Galignani in 1828. The cost of 
our total purchases, a goodly heap, amounted 
to but five dollars. 

The balance in quantity if not in quality 
in old books is held in Buenos Ayres by three 
brothers named Palumbo — Italians. The eld- 
est is a surly old man who must be treated with 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 139 

severity from the very beginning. How he 
manages to support himself we do not know, 
for whenever we were in his store we were sure 
to hear him assail some customer most abu- 
sively. In a small subsidiary store of his, 
among a heap of old pamphlets, we came upon 
the original folios of Humboldt's account of 
the fauna and flora of South America. Upon 
asking the price, the man said thirty-five apiece 
— we thought he meant pesos, and our sur- 
prise was genuine when we found he meant 
centavos — about fifteen cents. From him we 
got the first edition of Kendall's Santa Fe Ex- 
pedition, One of his brothers was very pleasant 
and probably, in consequence, the most pros- 
perous of the three. The third was reputed 
crazy, and certainly acted so, but after an 
initial encounter we became friends and got on 
famously. All three had a very fair idea of 
the value of Argentine books, but knew little 
or nothing about English. 

Another dealer who has probably a better 
stock than any of the Palumbos is a man 
named Real y Taylor. His grandmother was 
English, and his father spent his life dealing in 
books. At his death the store was closed and 
the son started speculating in land with the 



140 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

money his father had left him. Prices soared 
and he bought, but when the crash came he 
was caught with many others. Bethinking 
himself of his father's books, he took them out 
of storage and opened a small booth. The 
stock was large and a good part of it has not 
yet been unpacked. Taylor has only a superfi- 
cial knowledge of what he deals in. He shears 
folios, strips off original boards and old leathers 
to bind in new pasteboard, and raises the price 
five or ten dollars after the process. In this 
he is no different from the rest, for after a fairly 
comprehensive experience in Buenos Ayres 
we may give it as our opinion that there is not 
a single dealer who knows the ''rules" as they 
are observed by scores of dealers in America 
and England. Taylor had only one idea, and 
that was that if any one were interested in a 
book, that book must be of great value; he 
would name a ridiculous price, and it was a 
question of weeks and months before he would 
reduce it to anything within the bounds of 
reason. We never really got very much from 
him, the best things being several old French 
books of early voyages to South America and 
a first edition of Anson's Voyage Around the 
World. Just before we left he decided to auc- 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 141 

tion off his stock, putting up five hundred 
lots a month. The first auction lasted three 
nights. The catalogue was amusing, giving a 
description of each book in bombastic fashion 
— all were "unique in interest," and about 
every third was the ''only copy extant outside 
the museums." He had put base prices on 
most, and for the rest had arranged with 
cappers. The attendance was very small and 
nearly everything was bid in. It was curious 
to see how to the last he held that any book 
that any one was interested in must be of 
unusual worth. There was put up a French 
translation of Azara's Quadrupeds of Paraguay, 
The introduction was by Cuvier, but it was 
not of great interest to us, for a friend had 
given us the valuable original Spanish edition. 
Taylor had asked fifteen dollars, which we had 
regarded as out of the question; he then took 
off the original binding, cut and colored the 
pages, and rebound it, asking twenty dollars. 
At the auction we thought we would get it, 
if it went for very little; but when we bid, 
Taylor got up and told the auctioneer to say 
that as it was a work of unique value he had 
put as base price fifteen dollars each for the 
two volumes. The auction was a failure, and 



142 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

as it had been widely and expensively adver- 
tised, the loss must have been considerable. 

As a whole, we found the booksellers of 
a disagreeable temperament. In one case we 
almost came to blows; luckily not until we 
had looked over the store thoroughly and 
bought all we really wanted, among them a 
first edition of Howells's Italian Journeys, in 
perfect condition, for twenty -five cents. There 
were, of course, agreeable exceptions, such as 
the old French-Italian from whom, after many 
months' intermittent bargaining, we bought Le 
Vaillant's Voyage en Afrique, the first edition, 
with most delightful steel-engravings. He at 
first told us he was selling it at a set price 
on commission, which is what we found they 
often said when they thought you wanted a 
book and wished to preclude bargaining. This 
old man had Amsterdam catalogues that he 
consulted in regard to prices when, as could 
not have been often the case, he found in them 
references to books he had in stock. We know 
of no Argentine old bookstore that prints a 
catalogue. 

In the larger provincial cities of Argentina 
we met with singularly little success. In 
Cordoba the only reward of an eager search 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 143 

was a battered paper-covered copy of All on 
the Irish Shore, with which we were glad to 
renew an acquaintance that had lapsed for 
several years. We had had such high hopes of 
Cordoba, as being the old university town and 
early centre of learning! There was indeed 
one trail that seemed to promise well, and we 
diligently pursued vague stories of a "viejo" 
who had trunks of old books in every language, 
but when we eventually found his rooms, 
opening off a dirty little patio, they were empty 
and bereft; and we learned from a grimy brood 
of children that he had gone to the hospital 
in Buenos Ayres and died there, and that his 
boxes had been taken away by they knew not 
whom. 

As in Argentina, the best-known Chilian 
writers are historians or lawyers; and in our 
book-hunts in Santiago we encountered more 
or less the same conditions that held in Buenos 
Ayres — shelf upon shelf of legal or medical 
reference books and technical treatises. The 
works of certain well-known historians, such as 
Vicuna Mackenna and Amonategui, consis- 
tently command relatively high prices; but, 
as a whole, books are far cheaper on the west 
side of the Andes. One long afternoon in 



144 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the Calle San Diego stands out. It was a 
rich find, but we feel that the possibiKties of 
that store are still unexhausted. That after- 
noon's trove included the first edition of 
Mungo Park's Travels, with the delightful 
original etchings; a History of Guatemala, 
written by the Dominican missionaries, pub- 
lished in 1619, an old leather-bound folio, in 
excellent shape; a first edition of Holmes's 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table and three of 
the eight volumes of State Papers and 'Puhlich 
Documents of the United States. In these last 
there was James Monroe's book-plate, and it 
was curious to imagine how these volumes 
from his library had found their way to a coun- 
try where his "doctrine" has been the subject 
of such bitter discussion and so much misin- 
terpretation. The value of the original covers 
was no more understood in Chile than in Ar- 
gentina, and we got a complete set of Vicuna 
Mackenna's Campana de Tacna in the original 
pamphlets, as published, for but half what 
was currently asked for bound and mutilated 
copies. 

Valparaiso proved a barren field, and al- 
though one of the chief delights in book-hunt- 
ing lies in the fact that you can never feel that 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 145 

you have completely exhausted the possibilities 
of a place, we came nearer to feeling that way 
about Valparaiso than we ever had about a 
town before. We found but one store that 
gave any promise, and from it all we got were 
the first seven volumes of Dickens's Household 
Words in perfect condition, and the Campaign 
of the Rapidan, 

The little coast towns of Chile and Peru 
are almost as barren as the desert rocks and 
sand-hills that surround them; but even here 
we had occasional surprises, as when we 
picked up for fifty cents, at Antofogasta, a 
desolate, thriving little mining-port in the 
north of Chile, Vicuna Mackenna's Life of 
O^Higgins, for which the current price is from 
ten to fifteen dollars. Another time, in Co- 
quimbo, we saw a man passing along the street 
with a hammered -copper bowl that we coveted, 
and following, we found him the owner of a 
junk-shop filled with a heterogeneous collection 
of old clothes, broken and battered furniture, 
horse-trappings, and a hundred and one odds 
and ends, among which were scattered some 
fifty or sixty books. One of these was a first 
edition of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales in 
the familiar old brown boards of Ticknor & 
Company. 



146 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

Our South American book-hunting ended in 
Lima, the entrancing old city of the kings, 
once the capital of the New World, and not 
yet robbed by this commercial age of all its 
glamour and backwardness. We expected 
much, knowing that when the Chilians occu- 
pied the city in 1880 they sacked the national 
library of fifty thousand volumes that their 
own liberator, San Martin, had founded in 
1822, and although many of the books were 
carried ofiF to Chile, the greater part was scat- 
tered around Lima or sold by weight on the 
streets. We shall always feel that with more 
time, much patience, and good luck we could 
have unearthed many treasures; although at 
first sight the field is not a promising one, and, 
as elsewhere, one's acquaintances assure one 
that there is nothing to be found. In spite of 
this, however, we came upon a store that ap- 
peared teeming with possibilities. Without 
the "flaire" or much luck it might be passed 
by many times without exciting interest. 
Over the dingy grated window of a dilapidated 
colonial house is the legend "Encuader- 
nacion y Imprenta" ("Binding and Printing.") 
Through the grimy window-panes may be seen 
a row of dull law-books; but if you open the 



TWO BOOK-HUNTERS 147 

big gate and cross the patio, with its ancient 
hand-well in the centre, on the opposite side 
are four or five rooms with shelves of books 
along the walls and tottering and fallen piles 
of books scattered over the floor. Here we 
picked up among others an amusing little old 
vellum-covered edition of Horace, printed in 
England in 1606, which must have early found 
its way to South America, to judge from the 
Spanish scrawls on the title-page. We also 
got many of the works of Ricardo Palma, 
Peru's most famous writer, who built up the 
ruined national library, which now possesses 
some sixty thousand volumes, of which a 
twelfth part were donated by our own Smith- 
sonian Institution. One of the volumes we 
bought had been given by Palma to a friend, 
and had an autograph dedication which in 
other countries would have greatly enhanced 
its value, but which, curiously enough, seems 
to make no difference in South America. In 
Buenos Ayres we got a copy of the Letters from 
Europe of Campos Salles, Brazil's greatest 
president, which had been inscribed by him to 
the Argentine translator. Once in Sao Paulo 
we picked up an autographed copy of Gomes 
de Amorim, and in neither case did the auto- 



148 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

graph enter into the question of determining 
the price. 

We had heard rumors of possibiHties in 
store for us in Ecuador, Colombia, and Vene- 
zuela, but Lima was our "farthest north," 
for there our rambUngs in South America were 
reluctantly brought to a close. We feel, how- 
ever, that such as they were, and in spite of 
the fact that the names of many of the authors 
and places will be strange to our brethren who 
have confined their explorations to the northern 
hemisphere, these notes may awaken interest 
in a little-known field, which, if small in com- 
parison with America or the Old World, offers 
at times unsuspected prizes and rewards. 



VI 

Seth Bullock- 
Sheriff of the Black Hills Country 



VI 



SETH BULLOCK— SHERIFF OF THE 
BLACK HILLS COUNTRY 

With the death of Captain Seth Bullock, of 
Deadwood, South Dakota, there came to us 
who were his friends not only a deep sense of 
personal loss, but also the realization that one 
of the very last of the old school of frontiers- 
men had gone, one of those whom Lowell char- 
acterized as '^ stern men with empires in their 
brains." The hard hand of circumstance 
called forth and developed the type, and for 
a number of generations the battle with the 
wilderness continued in bitter force, and a race 
was brought forth trained to push on far be- 
yond the "edge of cultivation," and contend in 
his remote fastnesses with the Red Indian, and 
eke out a hard-earned existence from the grim 
and resentful wilds. In the wake of the van- 
guard came the settler and after him the mer- 
chant, and busy towns sprang up where the 
lonely camp-fire of the pioneer had flared to 

151 



152 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

the silent forest. The restless blood of the 
frontiers pressed ever onward; the Indian 
melted away like *^snow upon the desert's dusty 
face"; the great herds of game that formerly 
blackened the plains left the mute testimony 
of their passing in the scattered piles of 
whitened skulls and bleached bones. At last 
the time came when there was no further fron- 
tier to conquer. The restless race of empire- 
makers had staring them in the face the same 
fate as the Indian. Their rough-and-ready 
justice administered out of hand had to give 
way before the judge with his court-house and 
his jury. The majority of the old Indian 
fighters were shouldered aside and left to end 
their days as best they could, forgotten by 
those for whom they had won the country. 
They could not adapt themselves to the new 
existence; their day had passed and they went 
to join the Indian and the buffalo. 

Captain Seth Bullock, however, belonged to 
the minority, for no turn of the wheel could 
destroy his usefulness to the community, and 
his large philosophy of the plains enabled him 
to fit into and hold his place through every 
shift of surroundings. The Captain's family 
came from Virginia, but he was born in Wind- 




The Captain makes advances to a little Indian girl 



SETH BULLOCK 153 

sor, Ontario, in 1849, Before he was twenty 
he had found his way to Montana, and built 
for himself a reputation for justice which at 
that day and in that community could only be 
established by cold and dauntless courage. 

One of the feats of his early days of 
which he was justly proud was when he had 
himself hung the first man to be hung by law 
in Montana. The crowd of prospectors and 
cow-punchers did not approve of such an un- 
usual, unorthodox method of procedure as the 
hanging of a man by a public hangman after 
he had been duly tried and sentenced. They 
wished to take the prisoner and string him up 
to the nearest tree or telegraph-pole, with the 
readiness and despatch to which they were 
accustomed. To evidence their disapproval 
they started to shoot at the hangman; he fled, 
but before the crowd could secure their victim, 
the Captain had the mastery of the situation, 
and, quieting his turbulent fellow citizens with 
a cold eye and relentless six-shooter, he him- 
self performed the task that the hangman had 
left unfinished. The incident inspired the 
mob with a salutary respect for the law and 
its ability to carry out its sentences. I do not 
remember whether the Captain was mayor or 



154 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

sheriff at the time. He was trusted and ad- 
mired as well as feared, and when he was 
barely twenty-two he was elected State sen- 
ator from Helena, the' largest town in the then 
territory of Montana. 

It was in 1876 that the Captain first went 
to the Black Hills, that lovely group of moun- 
tains in the southwestern corner of South 
Dakota. He came with the first rush of 
prospectors when the famous Hidden Treasure 
Mine was discovered. On the site of what is 
at present the town of Deadwood he set up a 
store for miners' supplies, and soon had estab- 
lished himself as the arm of the law in that 
very lawless community. That was the Cap- 
tain's role all through his life. In the early 
years he would spend day and night in the 
saddle in pursuit of rustlers and road-agents. 
When he once started on the trail nothing 
could make him relinquish it; and when he 
reached the end, his quarry would better sur- 
render without drawing. He had a long arm 
and his district was known throughout the 
West as an unhealthy place for bad men. 
Starting as federal peace officer of the Black 
Hills, he later became marshal and sheriff of 
the district, and eventually marshal of South 



SETH BULLOCK 155 

Dakota, which position he held until 1914. 
As years passed and civilization advanced, 
his bag of malefactors became less simple in 
character, although maintaining some of the 
old elements. In 1908 he wrote me: 

I have been very busy lately; pulled two horse thieves 
from Montana last week for stealing horses from the 
Pine Ridge Indians. I leave to-day for Leavenworth 
with a bank cashier for mulling a bank. He may turn 
up on Wall Street when his term expires, to take a post 
graduate course. 

In 1907 he told me that he was going oflf 
among the Ute Indians, and I asked him to 
get me some of their pipes. He answered: 
"The Utes are not pipe-makers; they spend 
all their time rustling and eating government 
grub. We had six horse-thieves for the pen 
after the past term of court, and should get 
four more at the June term in Pierre. This 
will keep them quiet for a while. I am now 
giving my attention to higher finance, and 
have one of the Napoleons — a bank president 
— in jail here. He only got away with $106,- 
000 — he did not have time to become eligible 
for the Wall Street class." 

It was when the Captain was sheriff of the 
Black Hills that father first met him. A horse- 



156 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

thief that was "wanted" in the Deadwood dis- 
trict managed to sUp out of the Captain's 
clutches and was captured by father, who was 
deputy sheriff in a country three or four hun- 
dred miles north. A little while later father 
had to go to Deadwood on business. Fording 
a river some miles out of town he ran into the 
Captain. Father had often heard of Seth Bul- 
lock, for his record and character were known 
far and wide, and he had no diflSculty in iden- 
tifying the tall, slim, hawk-featured Westerner 
sitting his horse like a centaur. Seth Bullock, 
however, did not know so much about father, 
and was very suspicious of the rough, unkempt 
group just in from two weeks' sleeping out in 
the gumbo and sage-brush. He made up his 
mind that it was a tin-horn gambling outfit 
and would bear close watching. He was not 
sure but what it would be best to turn them 
right back, and let them walk around his dis- 
trict "like it was a swamp." After settling 
father's identity the Captain's suspicions van- 
ished. That was the beginning of their life- 
long friendship. 

After father had returned to the East to live, 
Seth Bullock would come on to see him every 
so often, and whenever my father's campaign- 



SETH BULLOCK 157 

ing took him West the Captain would join the 
train and stay with him until the trip was 
finished. These tours were rarely without in- 
cident, and in his autobiography father has 
told of the part Seth Bullock played on one of 
them. 

When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, 
I was sent by the National Committee on a trip into 
the States of the high plains and the Rocky Mountains. 
These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on 
the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was 
thought that I, because of my knowledge of and ac- 
quaintanceship with the people, might accomplish some- 
thing toward bringing them back into line. It was an 
interesting trip, and the monotony usually attendant 
upon such a campaign of political speaking was diversi- 
fied in vivid fashion by occasional hostile audiences. 
One or two of the meetings ended in riots. One meeting 
was finally broken up by a mob; everybody fought so 
that the speaking had to stop. Soon after this we reached 
another town where we were told there might be trouble. 
Here the local committee included an old and valued 
friend, a "two-gun" man of repute, who was not in the 
least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We 
marched round to the local opera-house, which was 
packed with a mass of men, many of them rather rough- 
looking. My friend the two-gun man sat immediately 
behind me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking 
at the audience; fixing his gaze with instant intentness 
on any section of the house from which there came so 
much as a whisper. The audience listened to me with 
rapt attention. At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical 



158 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

powers which proceeded from a misunderstanding of 
the situation, I remarked to the chairman: "I held that 
audience well; there wasn't an interruption." To which 
the chairman replied: "Interruption? Weil, I guess 
not ! Seth had sent round word that if any son of a 
gun peeped he'd kill him." {Autobiography y p. 141.) 

Father had the greatest admiration and 
aflPection for the Captain. It was to him that 
he was referring in his autobiography when 
he wrote: 

I have sometimes been asked if Wister's Virginian is 
not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have mentioned 
in this chapter was in all essentials the *' Virginian" in 
real life, not only in his force but in his charm. 

When we were hunting in Africa father 
decided that he would try to get Seth Bullock 
to meet us in Europe at the end of the trip. 
I remember father describing him to some of 
our English friends in Khartoum, and saying: 
"Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest 
type of frontiersman. He could handle him- 
self in any situation, and if I felt that I did 
not wish him to meet any particular person, 
the reflection would be entirely on the latter." 

The Captain wrote me that he was afraid he 
could not meet us in London because of the 
illness of one of his daughters, but matters 



SETH BULLOCK 159 

eventually worked out in such a way that he 
was able to go over to England, and when he 
met father there he said he felt like hanging 
his Stetson on the dome of Saint Paul's and 
shooting it oflF, to show his exhilaration at the 
reunion. He thoroughly enjoyed himself in 
England, and while at bottom he was genu- 
inely appreciative of the Britisher, he could 
not help poking sly fun at him. I remember 
riding on a bus with him and hearing him 
ask the conductor where this famous Picalilly 
Street was. The conductor said: "You must 
mean Piccadilly, sir." The Captain entered 
into a lengthy conversation with him, and with 
an unmoved stolidity of facial expression that 
no Red Indian could have bettered, referred 
each time to ''Picalilly," and each time the 
little bus conductor would interpose a ''You 
mean Piccadilly, sir," with the dogged per- 
sistency of his race. 

The major-domos and lackeys at the Guild- 
hall and other receptions and the "beefeaters" 
at the Tower were a never-failing source of 
delight; he would try to picture them on a 
bad pony in the cow country, and explain that 
their costume would "make them the envy 
of every Sioux brave at an Indian dog-dance." 



160 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

When my sister and I were in Edinburgh, 
the local guide who took us through the Castle 
showed us an ancient gun, which instead of 
being merely double-barrelled, possessed a 
cluster of five or six barrels. With great 
amusement he told us how an American to 
whom he had been showing the piece a few 
days previously had remarked that to be shot 
at with that gun must be like taking a shower- 
bath. A few questions served to justify the 
conclusion we had immediately formed as to 
identity of our predecessor. 

The summer that I was fourteen father 
shipped me oflf to the Black Hills for a camping 
trip with Seth Bullock. I had often seen him 
in the East, so the tall, spare figure and the 
black Stetson were familiar to me when the 
Captain boarded the train a few stations before 
reaching Dead wood. Never shall I forget the 
romance of that first trip in the West. It was 
all new to me. Unfortunately I had to leave 
for the East for the start of school before the 
opening of the deer season; but we caught a 
lot of trout, and had some unsuccessful bear- 
hunts — hunts which were doomed to un success 
before they started, but which supplied the 
requisite thrill notwithstanding. All we ever 



SETH BULLOCK 161 

found of the bear was their tracks, but we had 
a fleeting gUmpse of a bobcat, and that was 
felt amply to repay any amount of tramping. 
Our bag consisted of one jack-rabbit. The 
Captain told us that we were qualified to join 
a French trapper whom he had known. The 
Frenchman was caught by an unusually early 
winter and snowed in away off in the hills. 
In the spring, a good deal to every one's sur- 
prise, he turned up, looking somewhat thin, 
but apparently totally unconcerned over his 
forced hibernation. When asked what he had 
lived on, he replied: "Some day I keel two 
jack-rabeet, one day one, one day none !" 

The Captain and I took turns at writing my 
diary. I find his entry for August 26 : 

Broke camp at Jack Boyden's on Sand Creek at 6.30 
A. M., and rode via Redwater Valley and Hay Creek to 
Belle Fourche, arriving at the S. B. ranch at two o'clock; 
had lunch of cold cabbage; visited the town; returned 
to camp at five p. m. ; had supper at the wagon and 
fought mosquitoes until ten o'clock. 

Broke camp and rode via Owl Creek divide and In- 
dian Creek through several very large towns inhabited 
chiefly by prairie dogs, to our camp on Porcupine Creek. 
Fought mosquitoes from 3 A. M. to breakfast time. 

I had long been an admirer of Bret Harte, 
and many of the people I met might have 



162 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

stepped from the pages of his stories. There 
was the old miner with twenty-two children, 
who couldn't remember all their names. His 
first wife had presented him with ten of them, 
but w^hen he married again he had told his 
second wife that it was his initial venture in 
matrimony. He gave a vivid description of 
the scene when some of the progeny of his first 
marriage unexpectedly put in an appearance. 
Time had smoothed things over, and the knowl- 
edge of her predecessor had evidently only act- 
ed as a spur to greater deeds, as exemplified 
in the tw^elve additions to the family. 

Then there was the old lady with the vine- 
gar jug. She was the postmistress of Buck- 
horn. We had some difficulty in finding the 
post-office, but at length we learned that the 
postmistress had moved it fifteen miles away, 
to cross the State border, in order that she 
might live in Wyoming and have a vote. We 
reached the shack to find it deserted, but we 
had not long to wait before she rode in, pur- 
ple in the face and nearly rolling off her pony 
from laughter. She told us that she had got 
some vinegar from a friend, and while she was 
riding along the motion exploded the jug, and 
the cork hit her in the head; what with the 



SETH BULLOCK 163 

noise and the blow she made sure the Indians 
were after her, and rode for her hfe a couple 
of miles before she realized what had happened. 

What could have surpassed the names of the 
trails along which we rode and the canyons in 
which we camped? There was Hidden Trea- 
sure Gulch and Calamity Hollow, and a score 
more equally satisfying. That first trip was 
an immense success, and all during the winter 
that followed whenever school life became par- 
ticularly irksome I would turn to plans for the 
expedition that we had scheduled for the next 
summer. 

When the time to leave for the West arrived 
I felt like an old stager, and indulged for the 
first time in the delight of getting out my 
hunting outfit, deciding what I needed, and 
supplementing my last summer's rig with other 
things that I had found would be useful. Like 
all beginners I imagined that I required a lot 
for which I had in reality no possible use. 
Some men always set off festooned like Christ- 
mas-trees, and lose half the pleasure of the 
trip through trying to keep track of their be- 
longings. They have special candles, patented 
lanterns, enormous jack-knives with a blade 
to fulfil every conceivable purpose, rifles and 



164 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

revolvers and shotguns galore; almost anything 
that comes under the classification of "it might 
come in handy." The more aflBuent hunter 
varies only in the quality and not the quan- 
tity of his "gad jets." He usually has each 
one neatly tucked away in a pigskin case. 
The wise man, however, soon learns that al- 
though anything may "come in handy" once 
on a trip, you could even on that occasion 
either get along without it or find a substitute 
that would do almost as well. It is surprising 
with what a very little one can make out per- 
fectly comfortably. This was a lesson which I 
very quickly learned from the Captain. 

The second trip that we took was from 
Dead wood. South Dakota, to Medora, North 
Dakota. I had never seen the country in 
which father ranched, and Seth Bullock de- 
cided to take me up along the trail that father 
had been travelling when they met for the 
first time. 

We set off on Friday the 13th, and naturally 
everything that happened was charged up to 
that inauspicious day. We lost all our horses 
the first night, and only succeeded in retriev- 
ing a part of them. Thereafter it started in 
raining, and the gumbo mud became all but 



SETH BULLOCK 165 

impassable for the "chuck-wagon." The mos- 
quitoes added to our misery, and I find in my 
diary in the Captain's handwriting a note to 
the effect that "Paul shot three mosquitoes 
with a six-shooter. Stanley missed with a 
shotgun." 

• The Captain was as stoHd and unconcerned 
as a Red Indian through every change of 
weather. He had nicknamed me "Kim" from 
Kipling's tale, and after me he had named a 
large black horse which he always rode. It 
was an excellent animal with a very rapid 
walk which proved the bane of my existence. 
My pony, "Pickpocket," had no pace that 
corresponded, and to adapt himself was forced 
to travel at a most infernal jiggle that was not 
only exceedingly wearing but shook me round 
so that the rain permeated in all sorts of crevices 
which might reasonably have been expected to 
prove water-tight. With the pride of a boy 
on his second trip, I could not bring myself 
to own up to my discomfort. If I had, the 
Captain would have instantly changed his 
pace; but it seemed a soft and un -Western 
admission to make, so I suffered in external 
silence, while inwardly heaping every insult I 
could think of upon the Captain's mount. We 



166 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

were travelling long distances, so the gait was 
rarely changed unless I made some excuse to 
loiter behind, and then walked my pony in slow 
and solitary comfort until the Captain was 
almost out of sight, and it was time to press 
into a lope which comfortably and far too 
rapidly once more put me even with him. 

The Captain was a silent companion; he 
would ride along hour after hour, chewing a 
long black cigar, in a silence broken only by 
verses he would hum to himself. There was 
one that went on interminably, beginning: 

"I wonder if ever a cowboy 
Will be seen in those days long to come; 
I wonder if ever an Indian 
Will be seen in that far bye-and-bye." 

Every now and then some butte would sug- 
gest a reminiscence of the early days, and a 
few skilfully directed questions would lure him 
into a chain of anecdotes of the already van- 
ished border-life. He was continually coming 
out with a quotation from some author with 
whose writings I had never thought him ac- 
quainted. Fishing in a Black Hills stream, I 
heard him mutter: 

"So you heard the left fork of the Yuba 
As you stood on the banks of the Po." 



SETH BULLOCK 167 

He had read much of KipHng's prose and 
poetry, but what he most often quoted were 
the lines to Fighting Bob Evans. 

In his house in Deadwood he had a good 
library, the sort of one which made you feel 
that the books had been selected to read and 
enjoy, and not bought by the yard like window- 
curtains, or any other furnishings thought 
necessary for a house. Mrs. Bullock was pres- 
ident of the "Women's Literary Club," and I 
remember father being much impressed with 
the work that she was doing. 

As I have said before, the Captain was a man 
whom changing conditions could not throw 
to one side. He would anticipate the changes, 
and himself take the lead in them, adapting 
himself to the new conditions; you could count 
upon finding him on top. He was very proud 
of the fact that he had brought the first alfalfa 
to the State, and showed me his land near 
Belle Fourche, where he had planted the origi- 
nal crop. Its success was immediate. He 
said that he could not claim the credit of hav- 
ing introduced potatoes, but an old friend of 
his was entitled to the honor, and he dehghted 
in telling the circumstances. The Captain's 
friend, whom we can call Judge Jones, for I've 



168 THE HAPPY HUNTINGS-GROUNDS 

forgotten his name, had opened a trading-post 
in what was at that time the wild territory of 
Dakota. The Indians were distinctly hostile, 
and at any good opportunity were ready to 
raid the posts, murdering the factors and loot- 
ing the trading goods. In the judge's terri- 
tory there was one particularly ugly customer, 
half Indian and half negro, known as Nigger 
Bill. The judge was much interested in the 
success of his adventure in potatoes, and the 
following was one of the letters he received 
from his factor, as Seth Bullock used to quote 
it to me: 

Dear Judge, 

This is to tell you all is well here and I hope is same 
with you. Nigger Bill came to the door of the stockade 
to-day and said "I am going to get in." I said "Nigger 
Bill you will not get in." Nigger Bill said "I will get 
in." I shot Nigger Bill. He is dead. The potatoes is 
doing fine. 

Although realizing to the full that the change 
was inevitable and, of course, to the best in- 
terests of the country, and naturally taking 
much pride in the progress his State was mak- 
ing, the Captain could not help at times feeling 
a little melancholy over the departed days 
when there was no wire in the country, and 



SETH BULLOCK 169 

one could ride where one listed. He wrote me 
in 1911: "The part of South Dakota which 
you knew has all been covered with the shacks 
of homesteaders, from Belle Pourche to Me- 
dora, and from the Cheyenne agency to the 
Creek Where the Old Woman Died." The old 
times had gone, never to return, and although 
the change was an advance, it closed an ex- 
istence that could never be forgotten or re- 
lived by those who had taken part in it. 

The Captain gave me very sound advice 
when I was trying to make up my mmd whether 
or not to go to college. I was at the time 
gomg through the period of impatience that 
comes to so many boys when they feel that 
they are losing valuable time, during which 
they should be starting in to make their way 
m the world. I had talked it over with the 
Captain during one of the summer trips, and 
soon afterward he wrote me: 

Ride the old studies with spurs. I don't like the idea 
of your going out to engage in business until you have 
gone through Harvard. You will have plenty of time 
after you have accomplished this to tackle the world 
1 ake my advice, my boy, and don't think of it. A man 
without a college education nowadays is badly handi- 
capped. If he has had the opportunity to go through 
coUege and does not take advantage of it, he goes through 



170 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

life with a regret that becomes more intensified as he 
gets older. Life is a very serious proposition if we 
would live it well. 

I went through college and I have often 
realized since how excellent this advice was, 
and marvelled not a little at the many-sided- 
ness of a frontiersman who could see that par- 
ticular situation so clearly. 

The year before I went with my father to 
Africa, R. H. Munro Ferguson and myself 
joined the Captain in South Dakota for a 
prairie-chicken hunt. We were to shoot in 
the vicinity of the Cheyenne Indian reserva- 
tion, and the Captain took us through the reser- 
vation to show us how the Indian question was 
being handled. The court was excellently run, 
but what impressed us most was the judge's 
name, for he was called Judge No Heart. 
Some of our hunting companions rejoiced in 
equally unusual names. There were Spotted 
Rabbit, No Flesh, Yellow Owl, and High 
Hawk, not to forget Spotted Horses, whose 
prolific wife was known as Mrs. Drops-Two-at- 
a-Time. We had with us another man named 
Dave Snowball, who looked and talked just 
like a Southern darky. As a matter of fact, 
he was half negro and half Indian. In the old 



II 



SETH BULLOCK 171 

days negro slaves not infrequently escaped and 
joined the Indians. I went to see Dave's 
father. There was no mistaking him for what 
he was, but when I spoke to him he would 
answer me in Sioux and the only English words 
I could extract from him were "No speak 
English." He may have had some hazy idea 
that if he talked English some one would 
arrest him and send him back to his old mas- 
ters, although they had probably been dead for 
thirty or forty years. Possibly living so long 
among the Sioux, he had genuinely forgotten 
the language of his childhood. 

High Hawk and Oliver Black Hawk were 
old ''hostiles." So was Red Bear. We came 
upon him moving house. The tepee had just 
been dismantled, and the support poles were 
being secured to a violently objecting pony. 
A few weeks later when we were on the train 
going East, Frederic Remington joined us. 
He was returning from Montana, and upon 
hearing that we had been on the Cheyenne 
reservation he asked if we had run into old 
Red Bear, who had once saved his life. He 
told us that many years before he had been 
picked up by a party of hostiles, and they had 
determined to give him short shrift, when Red 



172 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

Bear, with whom he had previously struck 
a friendship, turned up, and successfully inter- 
ceded with his captors. One reminiscence led 
to another, and we were soon almost as grate- 
ful to Red Bear for having opened such a 
store as Remington had been for having his 
life spared. Frederic Remington was a born 
raconteur, and pointed his stories with a bluff, 
homely philosophy, redolent of the plains and 
the sage-brush. 

The night before we left the Indians the 
Captain called a council. All the old ''hos- 
tiles" and many of the younger generation 
gathered. The peace-pipes circulated. We 
had brought with us from New York a quan- 
tity of German porcelain pipes to trade with 
the Indians. Among them was one monster 
with a bowl that must have held from an 
eighth to a quarter of a pound of tobacco. 
The Indians ordinarily smoke *'kinnikinick," 
which is chopped-up willow bark. It is mild 
and gives a pleasant, aromatic smoke. The 
tobacco which we had was a coarse, strong 
shag. We filled the huge pipe with it, and, 
lighting it, passed it round among the silent, 
solemn figures grouped about the fire. The 
change was as instantaneous as it was unpre- 



SETH BULLOCK 173 

meditated. The first "brave" drew deeply 
and inhaled a few strong puffs; with a choking 
splutter he handed the pipe to his nearest 
companion. The scene was repeated, and as 
each Indian, heedless of the fate of his com- 
rades, inhaled the smoke of the strong shag, he 
would break out coughing, until the pipe had 
completed the circuit and the entire group was 
coughing in unison. Order was restored and 
willow bark substituted for tobacco, with sat- 
isfactory results. Then we each tried our 
hand at speaking. One by one the Indians 
took up the thread, grunting out their words 
between puffs. The firelight rose and fell, 
lighting up the shrouded shapes. When my 
turn came I spoke through an interpreter. 
Coached by the Captain as to what were their 
most lamentable failings — those that most fre- 
quently were the means of his making their 
acquaintance — I gave a learned discourse upon 
the evils of rustling ponies, and the pleasant 
life that lay before those who abstained from 
doing so. Grunts of approval, how sincere I 
know not, were the gratifying reply to my 
efforts. The powwow broke up with a sub- 
stantial feast of barbecued sheep, and next 
morning we left our nomadic hosts to continue 



174 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

their losing fight to maintain their hereditary- 
form of existence, hemmed in by an ever- 
encroaching white man's civihzation. 

Near the reservation we came upon two old 
outlaw buffaloes, last survivors of the great 
herds that not so many years previously had 
roamed these plains, providing food and cloth- 
ing for the Indians until wiped out by the 
ruthless white man. These two bulls, living 
on because they were too old and tough for 
any one to bother about, were the last sur- 
vivors left in freedom. A few days later we 
were shown by Scottie Phillips over his herd. 
He had many pure breeds but more hybrids, 
and the latter looked the healthier. Scottie 
had done a valuable work in preserving these 
buffalo. He was a squaw-man, and his pleas- 
ant Indian wife gave us excellent buffalo-berry 
preserves that she had put up. 

Scottie's ranch typified the end of both 
buffalo and Indian. Before a generation is 
past the buffalo will survive only in the traces 
of it left by crossing with cattle; and the 
same fate eventually awaits the Indian. No 
matter how wise be the course followed in gov- 
erning the remnants of the Indian race, it can 



SETH BULLOCK 175 

only be a question of time before their indi- 
viduality sinks and they are absorbed. 

The spring following this expedition I set 
off with father for Africa. The Captain took 
a great deal of interest in the plans for the 
trip. A week before we sailed he wrote: 

I send you to-day by American Express the best 
gun I know of for you to carry when in Africa. It is a 
single action Colts 38 on a heavy frame. It is a business 
weapon, always reliable, and will shoot where you hold 
it. When loaded, carry it on the safety, or first cock 
of the hammer. 

Seth Bullock was a hero-worshipper and 
father was his great hero. It would have 
made no difference what father did or said, the 
Captain would have been unshakably con- 
vinced without going into the matter at all 
that father was justified. There is an old 
adage that runs: "Any one can have friends 
that stand by him when he's right; what you 
want is friends that stand by you when you're 
wrong." Seth Bullock, had occasion ever de- 
manded it, would have been one of the latter. 

In the Cuban War he was unable to get into 
the Rough Riders, and so joined a cowboy 
regiment which was never fortunate enough to 



176 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

get over to Cuba, but suffered all its casualties 
— and there were plenty of them — from typhoid 
fever, in a camp somewhere in the South. He 
was made a sort of honorary member of the 
Rough Riders, and when there were informal 
reunions held in Washington he was counted 
upon to take part in them. He was a favorite 
with every one, from the White House ushers 
to the French Ambassador. As an honorary 
member of the Tennis Cabinet he was present 
at the farewell dinner held in the White House 
three days before father left the presidency. 
A bronze cougar by Proctor had been selected 
as a parting gift, and it was concealed under a 
mass of flowers in the centre of the table. The 
Captain had been chosen to make the presen- 
tation speech, and when he got up and started 
fumbling with flowers to disclose the cougar 
father could not make out what had happened. 

The Captain, as he said himself, was a poor 
hand at saying good-by. He was in New 
York shortly before we sailed for Africa, but 
wrote: "I must leave here to-day for Sioux 
Falls; then again I am a mollycoddle when it 
comes to bidding good-by; can always easier 
write good-by than speak it." 

His gloomy forebodings about the Brazilian 



SETH BULLOCK 177 

trip were well justified. He was writing me to 
South America: 

I was glad to hear you will be with your father. I 
have been uneasy about this trip of his, but now that 
I know you are along I will be better satisfied. I don't 
think much of that country you are to explore as a 
health resort, and there are no folks like home folks 
when one is sick. 

The Captain made up his mind that if his 
regiment had failed to get into the Cuban 
War the same thing would not happen in the 
case of another war. In July, 1916, when the 
Mexican situation seemed even more acute 
than usual, I heard from the Captain : 

If we have war with Mexico you and I will have to 
go. I am daily in receipt of application from the best 
riders in the country. Tell the Colonel I have carried 
out his plan for the forming of a regiment, and within 
fifteen days from getting word from him, will have a 
regiment for his division that will meet with his ap- 
proval. You are to have a captaincy to start with. I 
don't think Wilson will fight without he is convinced it 
will aid in his election. He is like Artemus Ward — 
willing to sacrifice his wife's relations on the altar of 
his country. 

The Mexican situation continued to drag 
along, but we at length entered the European 



178 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

war, and for a while it looked as if my father 
would be allowed to raise a division and take 
it over to the other side. The Captain had 
already the nucleus of his regiment, and the 
telegrams passed fast and furiously. How- 
ever, for reasons best known to the authori- 
ties in Washington, it all turned out to be to 
no purpose. The Captain was enraged. He 
wrote me out to Mesopotamia, where I was 
serving in the British forces: 

I was very mucli disgusted with Wilson when he 
turned us down. I had a splendid organization twelve 
hundred strong, comprising four hundred miners from 
the Black Hills Mines, four hundred railroad boys from 
the lines of the Chicago and Northwestern, and the 
C. B. and Q. in South Dakota, Western Nebraska, and 
Wyoming, and four hundred boys from the ranges of 
Western South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. It 
was the pick of the country. Your troop was especially 
good; while locally known as the Deadwood troop, most 
of the members were from the country northwest of 
Belle Fourche; twenty of your troop were Sioux who 
had served on the Indian police. Sixty-five per cent of 
the regiment had military training. Damn the dirty 
politics that kept us from going. I am busy now locally 
with the Red Cross and the Exemption Board of this 
county, being chairman of each. We will show the 
Democrats that we are thoroughbreds and will do our 
bit even if we are compelled to remain at home with 
the Democrats. 



SETH BULLOCK 179 

After expatiating at some length and with 
great wealth of detail as to just what he thought 
of the attitude of the administration, the Cap- 
tain continued with some characteristic advice : 

I am going to caution you now on being careful when 
you are on the firing line. Don't try for any Victoria 
Cross, or lead any forlorn hopes; modern war does not 
require these sacrifices, nor are battles won that way 
nowadays. I wouldn't have you fail in any particular 
of a brave American soldier, and I know you won't, but 
there is a vast difference between bravery and foolhardi- 
ness, and a man with folks at home is extremely selfish 
if unnecessarily foolhardy in the face of danger. 

All of it very good, sound advice, and just 
such as the Captain might have been expected 
to give, but the last in the world that any one 
would have looked for him to personally fol- 
low. 

The letter ended with *'I think the war will 
be over this year. I did want to ride a spotted 
cayuse into Berlin, but it don't look now as if 
I would." 

The next time that I heard from the Cap- 
tain was some time after I had joined the 
American Expeditionary Forces in France. In 
characteristic fashion he addressed the letter 
merely "Care of General Pershing, France," 



180 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

and naturally the letter took three or four 
months before it finally reached me. The Cap- 
tain had been very ill, but treated the whole 
matter as a joke. 

I have just returned from California, where I was on 
the sick Hst since last December, six months in a hospi- 
tal and sanitarium while the doctors were busy with 
knives, and nearly took me over the divide. I am 
recovering slowly, and hope to last till the Crown Prince 
and his murdering progenitor are hung. I was chair- 
man of the Exemption Board in 1917 and stuck to it 
until I was taken ill with grippe, which ended in an 
intestinal trouble which required the services of two 
surgeons and their willing knives to combat. The folks 
came to California after the remains, but when they 
arrived they found the remains sitting up and cussing 
the Huns. 

Now, Kim, take care of yourself; don't get reckless. 
Kill all the Huns you can, but don't let them have the 
satisfaction of getting you. 

My father's death was a fearful blow to the 
old Captain. Only those who knew him well 
realized how hard he was hit. He immediately 
set to work to arrange some monument to my 
father's memory. With the native good taste 
that ever characterized him, instead of think- 
ing in terms of statues, he decided that the 
dedication of a mountain would be most fit- 
ting, and determined to make the shaft to be 



SETH BULLOCK 181 

placed upon its summit simple in both form 
and inscription. Father was the one honorary 
member of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, 
and it was in conjunction with this society 
that the Captain arranged that Sheep Moun- 
tain, a few miles away from Deadwood, should 
be renamed Mount Roosevelt. 

General Wood made the address. A num- 
ber of my friends who were there gave me the 
latest news of the Captain. He wrote me that 
he expected to come East in September; that 
he was not feeling very fit, and that he was 
glad to have been able to go through with the 
dedication of the mountain. He was never a 
person to talk about himself, so I have no way 
of knowing, other than intuition, but I am 
certain that he felt all along that his days were 
numbered, and held on mainly in order to 
accomplish his purpose of raising the memorial. 

I waited until the middle of September and 
then wrote to Deadwood to ask the Captain 
when he would be coming. I found the reply 
in the newspapers a few days later. The Cap- 
tain was dead. The gallant old fellow had 
crossed the divide that he wrote about, leaving 
behind him not merely the sorrow of his friends 
but their pride in his memory. Well may we 



182 THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 

feel proud of having been numbered among 
the friends of such a thoroughgoing, upstand- 
ing American as Seth Bullock. As long as our 
country produces men of such caliber, we may 
face the future with a consciousness of our 
ability to win through such dark days as may 
confront us. The changes and shif tings that 
have ever accompanied our growth never found 
Seth Bullock at a loss; he was always ready to 

"Turn a keen, untroubled face 
Home to the instant need of things." 

Throughout his well-rounded and picturesque 
career he coped with the varied problems that 
confronted him in that unostentatious and 
unruflBed way so peculiarly his own, with 
which he faced the final and elemental fact of 
his recall from service. 



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